Vatroslav Jagić

Jagić was born in Varaždin, where he attended the elementary school and is the place where he started his secondary-school education. He finished that level of education at the 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 Croatischen Sprachen in Leipzig (Germany) in 1871.

Upon finishing his studies, Jagić returned to Zagreb, where from 1860 to 1870 he held the position of professor at a Croatian high school.

In 1869, Jagić was elected a full member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (now named the Croatian 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 (Novorossiysk 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 his studies started to be a replacement for retiring former lecturer Miklosich at the University of Vienna. Here he taught, did research, and published until his own retirement in 1908.

Jagić died in Vienna but was laid to rest in his native Varaždin.

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 several 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 (JAZU), 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 scathing reviews of Fran Kurelac's books Recimo koju [Let's Say a Few Words] (1860) and Fluminensia (1862),[3] and especially against the dominant Zagreb Philological School, represented by Adolfo Veber Tkalčević and Bogoslav Šulek, regarding the problems of orthography and pronunciation (Naš pravopis [Our Orthography], 1864). Although earlier he had held the opposite stance (Quomodo scribamus nos? [How Do We Write?], 1859), 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.[4] In his arguments he introduced the methods of comparative linguistics in Croatia,[5] and their influence paved the way for the Vukovian standard prevailing over Zagreb School's.[6] However, in the following decades he also criticised Vukovian scholarship (Maretić's 1899 grammar, and Broz's and Iveković's 1901 dictionary, among others).[7]

He prepared many critical editions of premodern texts, mainly Croatian and Old Church Slavonic. He was among the founders of the Stari pisci hrvatski [Old Croatian Writers] 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 (1869, co-edited by Jagić and Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski). For the series Jagić also edited the works of Šiško Menčetić and Džore Držić (1870), Mavro Vetranović (1871-1872, co-edited with Ivan August Kazančić and Đuro Daničić), and Nikola Dimitrović and Nikola Nalješković (1872, co-edited with Daničić).[8] Elsewhere he published critical editions of medieval Croatian texts, Glagolitic texts such as Codex Zographensis (1879), Codex Marianus (1883), Kiev Missal and Fragmenta Vindobonensia (1890), and others.[9]

In Berlin, he started publishing the Archiv für slavische Philologie (Archive for Slavic Philology) in 1875, and kept editing it 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 confirmed the importance of Slavic studies, its methodology, and its validity as a scholarly discipline.

While in Vienna, his intention was to write an encyclopedia related to the philology of the Slavs. This idea led him to write Istorija slavjanskoj filologii [History of Slavic philology]. This book was published in St. Petersburg in 1910 and in detail describes the development of Slavic studies from the beginning to the end of the 19th century.

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.[10] In his later years he also studied the life and works of Juraj Križanić (1618–1683), a Dominican priest that had shown considerable interest in Pan-Slavism and cooperation between Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

Jagić's work is impressive in scope and quality: Croatian linguist Josip Hamm has remarked that Jagić's collected works would, put together, number more than 100 volumes of large format.

Among his most famous students were the Polish Slavic specialist Aleksander Brückner and the Ukrainian poet and scholar Ivan Franko.

A complete bibliography of Jagić's works has been published in Izabrani kraći spisi (1948).

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vatroslav Jagić.

Wikisource has the text of a 1920 Encyclopedia Americana article about Vatroslav Jagić.

• Jagić's biography in Croatian
• The grave of Vatroslav Jagic in Varazdin cemetery. on Flickr - Photo Sharing! at www.flickr.com
• A Portrait of Vatroslav Jagic (1838-1923) by Ivan Mestrovic in Varazdin town museum. on Flickr - Photo Sharing! at www.flickr.com