Dr. Dragan Jakovljević: Uticaj prosvetiteljskog pokreta na kulturu i obrazovanje Srba u Ugarskoj

The movement of the European urban bourgeoisie against the dogma and belief of the Middle ages, which set foundation to the modern European system of social equality, was organized first in England, and then through France and Germany spread to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Through the XVIII century, the members of the Age of Enlightenment managed to accomplish deep cultural and wide social reforms. In the second half of that century the rational ideas of “enlightment” were accepted by all the nations in the Monarchy, whose ethnic background at that time was very heterogeneous. Based on those ideas Serbian population which came to Hungary a century and a half before in a big migration, at the beginning of XIX century experienced its cultural revival. On the wings of that effect this part of the Serbian national corpus has successfully returned to the European cultural stream, after the centuries of the Ottoman domination. Since Serbia was still under the Turkish domination, Pest and Buda became the centres of Serbian literary, cultural and spiritual life. In the Austro-Hungarian empire, namely in its Hungarian part, the first modern Cyrillic printing press was established, thus making Pest the leading publishing centre for the Serbs. The first Serbian newspaper, as well as first Serbian theatre was established. The cultural association Matica srpska had been established and worked for half a century in that city – before it was moved to Novi Sad. The oldest Serbian literary gazette – Letopis Matice srpske with the tradition long almost two centuries was also established in Pest and is still being published nowadays, and the Pest University became the leading institution for education of future Serbian intellectuals, which had given a large contribution during the XIX century to a cultural revival of the native country, after the liberation from the Turks.

The lecture will be held in Serbian.