Vatroslav Jagić
Vatroslav Jagić was a Croatian scholar of Slavic studies in the second half of the 19th century.
Life
Jagić was born in Varaždin to Vinko, a shoemaker, and Ana Jagić née Kraljek. In his hometown he attended the elementary school and started his secondary-school education. He finished that level of education at the Classical Gymnasium in Zagreb. Having a particular interest in philology, he moved to Vienna, where he was lectured in Slavic studies under the guidance of Franz Miklosich. He continued his studies and defended his doctoral dissertation Das Leben der Wurzel dê in den slavischen Sprachen in Leipzig in 1871.Upon finishing his studies, Jagić returned to Zagreb, where from 1860 to 1870 he worked as a professor at the Zagreb Gymnasium. In 1862 he married Sidonija Struppi, with whom he had three children. His daughter Stanka married the philologist Milan Rešetar.
In 1869, Jagić was elected a full member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts, and a correspondent member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg. Next year, 1871, he became a professor of Slavic studies at Odessa University and worked also in Berlin, where he moved in 1874 to become the very first professor of Slavic studies at the prestigious Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin. Jagić held this post until 1880, when he moved again and became teacher at the University of St Petersburg.
In 1886, he returned to Vienna, where at the University of Vienna he replaced the retiring Miklosich. There he taught until his own retirement in 1908, but continued research and publishing afterwards. In his final years, after the First World War, he had financial difficulties and was forced to sell his book collection. At the time, he wrote his autobiography Spomeni mojega života, which was posthumously published by the Serbian Royal Academy in two volumes, in 1930 and 1934, edited by Milan Rešetar.
Jagić died in Vienna and was laid to rest in his native Varaždin.
Works
Works on literature and language written by Jagić started to be published for the first time in the reports of the high school where he worked. In 1863, with his fellow researchers Josip Torbar and Franjo Rački he launched the journal Književnik. In this journal, he published a number of articles regarding the problems of the grammar, syntax, orthography, and history of the language used by Croats. His works were noticed within the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts, founded in Croatia in 1866. His works were mainly related to verbs, paleography, vocalization of the language, folk poetry, and its sources. He polemicised against the Rijeka Philological School through negative reviews of 's books Recimo koju and Fluminensia, and especially against the dominant Zagreb Philological School, represented by Adolfo Veber Tkalčević and Bogoslav Šulek, regarding the problems of orthography and pronunciation. Although earlier he had held the opposite stance, in the 1864 article he criticised Zagreb School's usage of the -ah ending in the genitive plural form of nouns, as it lacked basis in the history of language, instead arguing for the -â ending, in line with the norm espoused by Vuk Karadžić and his followers; he also argued for introducing moderate elements of phonemic orthography to the otherwise morphological and etymological norm of the Zagreb School. In his arguments he introduced the methods of comparative linguistics in Croatia, and their influence paved the way for the Vukovian standard prevailing over Zagreb School's. However, in the following decades he also criticised Vukovian scholarship.He prepared many critical editions of premodern texts, mainly Croatian and Old Church Slavonic. He was among the founders of the Stari pisci hrvatski series published by JAZU, which focused on publishing Croatian literature from the Renaissance to the era of the Illyrian movement, beginning with an edition of the works of Marko Marulić. For the series Jagić also edited the works of Šiško Menčetić and Džore Držić, Mavro Vetranović, and and Nikola Nalješković. Elsewhere he published critical editions of medieval Croatian texts, Glagolitic Old Church Slavonic texts such as Codex Zographensis, Codex Marianus, Kiev Missal and Fragmenta Vindobonensia, and others.
In Berlin, he started publishing the Archiv für slavische Philologie in 1875, which he kept editing for 45 years. The periodical focused the attention of scholars and the general public on the Slavs, increasing their interest in Slavic languages and their culture. It also affirmed the importance of Slavic studies, its methodology, and its validity as a scholarly discipline.
While in Vienna, he developed the idea to organise the publication of a multi-volume encyclopedia of Slavic philology, which began to be realised a decade later in Peterburg. The first volume was Jagić's own Istorija slavjanskoj filologii, published in 1910, which meticulously described the development of Slavic studies from the beginnings to the end of the 19th century. The following volumes were written by Aleksey Shakhmatov,, Olaf Broch, and others, but the extensive project was never completed.
In his work on Old Church Slavic he concluded and proved that the language did not originate in the central plains of Pannonia, as it was previously claimed by Jernej Kopitar and Franz Miklošič, but in southern Macedonia. In his later years he also studied the life and works of Juraj Križanić, a Dominican priest that had shown considerable interest in Pan-Slavism and cooperation between Catholicism and Orthodoxy.
Jagić's work is regarded as impressive in scope and quality: Croatian linguist Josip Hamm remarked that Jagić's collected works would, put together, number more than 100 volumes of large format, and considers his work to have brought Slavic studies onto an equal footing with the other major philological branches. Serbian linguist Aleksandar Belić praised Jagić's style and clarity, as well as the breadth of his scholarly interests.
Among his most famous students were the Norwegian slavist Olaf Broch, Polish slavist Aleksander Brückner and the Ukrainian poet and scholar Ivan Franko.
Selected bibliography
Books
Gramatika jezika hèrvatskoga: osnovana na starobugarskoj slovenštini. Dio pèrvi: Glasovi . Zagreb: Brzotiskom Antuna Jakića Das Leben der Wurzel dê in den slavischen Sprachen . Wien: Comissionverlag von Carl Gerold’s Sohn. Historija književnosti naroda hrvatskoga i srbskoga. Knjiga prva: Staro doba . Zagreb: Štamparija Dragutina Albrechta.- * Russian edition: Исторія сербско-хорватской литературы . Казань. Лекціи по исторической грамматикѣ русскаго языка . Петербургъ: Литогр. Гробовой. Вопросъ о Кириллѣ и Меѳодіи въ славянской филологіи . Санктпетербургъ: Типографія Императорской академіи наукъ. Четыре критико-палеографическія статьи . Санктпетербургъ: Типографія Императорской академіи наукъ. Критическія замѣтки по исторіи русскаго языка . Санктпетербургъ: Типографія Императорской академіи наукъ. Die Menandersentenzen in der altkirchenslavischen Übersetzung . Wien: F. Tempsky. Ruska književnost u osamnaestom stoljeću . Slike iz svjetske književnosti. Svezak treći. Zagreb: Matica hrvatska. Разсужденія южно-славянской и русской старины о церковно-славянскомъ языкѣ = Codex slovenicus rerum grammaticarum, in: Изслѣдованія по русскому языку: Томъ I. Санктпетербургъ: Типографія Императорской академіи наукъ. Also as separate book, 1896, С.-Петербургъ = Petropoli: Berolini, apud Weidmannos. Beiträge zur slavischen Syntax. Zur Analyse des einfachen Satzes: erste Hälfte . Wien: in Commission bei Carl Gerold's Sohn. А. С. Пушкинъ въ южно-славянскихъ литературахъ. Сборникъ библіографическихъ и литературно-критическихъ статей, with Ivan Shishmanov, and. Санктпетербургъ: Типографія Императорской академіи наукъ. Исторія славянской филологіи . Энциклопедія славянской филологіи. Выпускъ 1. Санктпетербургъ: Типографія Императорской академіи наукъ. Графика у Славянъ, with Victor Gardthausen. Энциклопедія славянской филологіи. Выпускъ 3. Санктпетербургъ: Типографія Императорской академіи наукъ. Entstehungsgeschichte der kirchenslavischen Sprache "Neue berichtige und erweiterte Ausgabe". Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung. Život i rad Jurja Križanića . Zagreb: JAZU. Спомени мојега живота: I део / II део . Београд: Српска краљевска академија. Izabrani kraći spisi . Edited and translated by. Zagreb: Matica hrvatska.Korespondencija Vatroslava Jagića 1 . Edited by Petar Skok. Zagreb: Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti.Djela Vatroslava Jagića IV.: Članci iz „Književnika“ III.. Historija književnosti naroda hrvatskoga ili srbskoga . Edited by. Zagreb: Jugoslavenska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti.Rasprave, članci i sjećanja . Edited by, translated by Mihovil Kombol. Pet stoljeća hrvatske književnosti. Knjiga 43. Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, Zora.Письма И. В. Ягича к русским ученым. 1865 – 1886 . Prepared by and T. I. Lysenko, edited by Viktor Vinogradov and G. P. Blok. Москва - Ленинград: Издательство Академии наук СССР. Korespondencija Vatroslava Jagića 2: Pisma iz Rusije . Edited by Josip Hamm. Zagreb: JAZU.Korespondencija Vatroslava Jagića 3: Pisma iz Rusije . Edited by Josip Hamm. Zagreb: JAZU.
- Published posthumously by Milan Rešetar: Spomeni moga života .
- with Nikola Andrić: Korespondencija 1890–1918 . Edited by Ivana Mandić Hekman. Zagreb: Ex libris.