Kukuljevic-Sakcinski, Ivan

Born May 29, 1816, in Varaždin; died Aug. 1, 1889, at Tuhakovec Castle in the Croatian Zagorje. Croatian politician, writer, and historian. During the 1840’s, Kukuljevic-Sakcinski belonged to the liberal trend of the Illyrian movement.

During the Revolution of 1848 he was one of the initiators of the convocation of the 1848 Slavic Congress in Prague. From 1861 to 1867 he was the grand Zupanj of Zagreb. In 1863 he founded the National Party, which maintained a pro-Austrian policy.

Kukuljevic-Sakcinski laid the foundations of modern Croatian historiography and archaeography. In 1850 he founded the Yugoslav Historical Society, which published the annual Archive of Yugoslav History (1850–75); he undertook the first scholarly edition of the chronicles and acta dealing with the history of the South Slavs during the period from the 13th to 18th century, as well as legal documents from the ninth to 19th century. Kukuljevic-Sakcinski’s work The Struggle of the Croats Against the Mongols and Tatars (1863) is still of scholarly importance. He was also the author of plays and historical novellas, and he compiled the first scholarly bibliography of Croatian literature.