Josip, the first historian of Slavonia, will tell you what Slavonia looked like before the arrival of the Ottomans!

Josip

Groblje Svete Ane

Josip will tell you what Slavonia looked like before the arrival of the Ottomans!

Josip Bösendorfer was one of the most important Slavonian historians and a participant in anti-Hungarian protests. He is an extremely important historian because he was the first to start researching the regional history of Slavonia.

He was born in Lukač near Virovitica. His father Leopold was a carpenter, a native of Upper Austria, his mother's name was Marija, maiden name Pištanac.

He began his study of history and geography in Zagreb, but because of his participation in the burning of the Hungarian flag in 1895, he had to continue it in European cities. After successful studies in Graz, Vienna and Prague, he received his doctorate in Zagreb in 1899 with a thesis on the Zrin-Frankapan conspiracy.
At first, he was employed as a teacher at the Donjogradska gymnasium in Zagreb for one year, and then moved to Osijek, where he was a teacher from 1900 to 1916. The following year, he took the position of manager of the Osijek gymnasium, and from 1914 he became a city representative.

He retired early in 1932, and then turned to archaeology. He joins the Osijek Society of Friends of Antiquity, i.e. the Archaeological Club "Mursa". In 1941, he took over the collections of the Osijek City Museum, which he moved to the premises of the Fortress in 1946. He was the director of that museum until 1949.

He spoke Croatian and German, and understood and read Russian, Italian and French. He wrote on economic and church history topics, and also published archival material on Slavonia and Osijek. In his "Sketches from Slavonic History" published in 1910, he enabled the reader to get an idea of ​​Slavonia in the Middle Ages until the arrival of the Ottomans.

He started and edited the Osijek anthology. This dedicated scientist was a member of the Munich, Vienna and Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts. He was one of the few great researchers who turned to his own homeland in his research.

Dubravko Aladić wrote and concluded about the famous historian: - He spent his brightest creative period in Osijek, and that in a time when it was not profitable to deal with Croatian history. In any case, Bösendorfer made a significant contribution to the development of historiography in the area of ​​Slavonia. –

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The first historian of Slavonia