Linhart, Anton Tomaž

Born Dec. 11, 1756, in Radovljica; died July 14, 1795, in Ljubljana. Figure in the Slovene national Enlightenment, dramatist, historian.

Linhart supported the reforms of Emperor Joseph II and was an anticlerical. The son of an artisan, he graduated from the Jesuit Gymnasium in Ljubljana and studied economics in Vienna in the late 1770’s and early 1780’s (?). During the 1780’s and 1790’s, Linhart was a member of the Slovene national Enlightenment circle headed by Baron ž. Zois. His first artistic works were the romantic tragedy Miss Jenny Love (1780) and a collection of poems, Flowers of Carniola (1781), written in German. Linhart adapted foreign plays for the Slovene stage: the comedy The Windmill by J. Richter (1789, produced that same year as ž upanova Micka) and The Marriage of Figaro by Beaumarchais (published in 1790 as A Jolly Day, or Matiček Marries; staged in 1848). In these adaptations Linhart shifted the scene of action to Slovenia and filled the works with concrete social and political meaning. The adaptations laid the foundations for the Slovene democratic theater. In his works drawing on archaeological materials, Linhart was the first to provide historic evidence that the Slovenes are a single people, descendants of the ancient Carantanians.