Jovan Hadžić

Jovan Hadžić (Serbian Cyrillic: Јован Хаџић, pseudonym Miloš Svetić; Sombor, 8 September 1799 – Novi Sad, 28 April 1869) was a Serbian writer, legislator and the founder of Matica Srpska. He signed his literary work as Miloš Svetić and was an influential figure in the drafting of the Civil and Criminal Code of Serbia in 1844.[1] Serbia is the fourth modern-day European country after France, Austria and the Netherlands to have a codified legal system because of Hadžić's work.[2]

Jovan Hadžić
Portrait of Jovan Hadržić by Novak Radonić, 1854
Born	8 September 1799 Sombor, Austrian Empire
Died	28 April 1869 (aged 69) Novi Sad, Austro-Hungary
Occupation	writer, legislator

Biography

Jovan Hadžić is remembered as a founder of the Matica Srpska and as the most persistent opponent of Vuk Karadžić's orthographic reform.[3] However, Hadžić was also a poet and translator, a legislator in the Principality of Serbia, as well as an active public figure. Having established a commendable reputation through his early poetry, many thought he could be a worthy successor to Lukijan Mušicki.

As a student in Pest, Hadžić founded Matica Srpska in 1826, modeled in part after the recently established but dormant Magyar Tudós Társaság (Hungarian Scholarly Society) which eventually became the Hungarian Academy of Science. In addition to books, it published journal Serbski Letopis, founded two years earlier by Georgije Magarašević, Pavel Jozef Šafárik and Lukijan Mušicki in Novi Sad, where Magarašević was professor and Šafarik the director of the Serbian gymnasium there.

Vuk Karadžić foresaw that the biggest battle in the future would be the battle for orthography. Hadžić wrote Sitnitze jezykoslovne (Language Details) in 1837, in which he attacked Vuk's reforms. He signed it with a pseudonym, Miloš Svetić. Once a supporter of Vuk, Hadžić was now an opponent, like Metropolitan Stevan Stratimirović who died a year earlier (1836). Vuk responded to Hadžić in kind, two years later. Other events at the time worked in favor of the vernacular, converging to make 1847 a decisive year. Vuk's translation of Novi Zavjet (The New Testament) appeared that year.

Selected works

• Sud u grammatiki Vekoslava Babukića, 1838
• Golubica s cvetom knižestva srbskog, 1839
• Vukov odgovor na Utuk, 1843
• Utuk 2 ili odgovor na Vukov odgovor, 1844
• Izstupleniia M. Svetića u Utuk II, 1845

See also

• Serbian civil law
• Matica srpska
• Georgije Stanković
• Josif Milovuk
• Gavrilo Bozitovac
• Jovan Demetrović
• Andrija Rozmirović
• Petar Rajić

References

1. "SOMBORAC – OSNIVAČ MATICE SRPSKE I PISAC PRVOG SRPSKOG GRAĐANSKOG ZAKONIKA (Jovan Hadžić) – Ravnoplov". Retrieved 2019-07-21.
2. Avramović, Sima (2014). "Srpski građanski zakonik (1844) i pravni transplanti - kopija austrijskog uzora ili više od toga?" (PDF). Srpski građanski zakonik - 170 godina.
3. "Vukova borba za uvođenje narodnog jezika u književnost". Opusteno.rs (in Serbian). Retrieved 2019-07-21.

• Translated and adapted from Serbian Wikipedia: Јован Хаџић
• Jovan Skerlić, Istrorija nove srpske knjizevnosti (Belgrade, 1914, 1921) pages 189-192.