Le monde slave dans les périodiques allemands de Croatie (1789-1848).

Abstract

The Slavic World in the Periodicals in German in Croatia, 1789-1848 Since the end of the 18th century until the second half of the 19th century the amount of periodicals published in continental Croatia kept growing. More or less ephemeral, those prints were written in a large part in German, as in other regions of the Habsburg monarchy. The contributors were not always Croatians. Some of them had come from Bohemia (Josip Praus), Slovenia (Rudolf Puff) or the German-speaking part of Austria (Franz Stauduar). Through those publications, they found a place in a local (Zagreb, Karlovac) or regional environment. The use of the German language in order to deal with the past, the present state and the future of the Slavs was self-evident for those former students of German-speaking universities. Many of them tended to write in both languages. The consciousness of a specific Slavic identity developed progressively. Such was the case of Emmerich Tkalac, who kept being critical towards a German-speaking press in Zagreb, which he thought proved not to be of any cultural or political value, since it was in fact conceived in Vienna. Der Pilger, Agramer Zeitung, Luna, Croatia: those titles have nevertheless played a role as cultural mediators between Slavs and German-speaking readers. In the articles dedicated to Slavic history and literature, those themes became important moments of self-reflection. A publication of the best Slavic texts in German was then perceived as an approval. Paradoxically, the recognition of Slavic cultural achievements in those periodicals tended to question the relevance of the German language as a communication medium in Croatia, and hence of such periodicals in the long term.