Politics by other means: Izidor Kršnjavi's university lecturing

Abstract

The main goal of Kršnjavi’s lecturing was to create, or at least to influence, his students’ worldview, that is, to make his students into good citizens of Croatia in particular and of the Habsburg Monarchy in general. For this reason, he was mostly interested in the ways in which the nations and empires had been created, and the reasons for their flourishing or downfall. This way of Kršnjavi’s thinking can easily be traced to his liberal education in Vienna. As his professors had done, he tried to enlighten his own students so that they could become the pillars of society governing various national and social processes. On the one hand, the reasoning behind such an educational policy was that education was crucial for the prevention of rural nationalism, while, on the other hand, education was seen as one of the means of the creation of loyal citizens with the ideological apparatus, which would prevent the influence of populism and daily political conflict. Although the character of political participation had changed and broadened since the time of Kršnjavi’s education in Vienna in the late 1860s, he nevertheless continued to work inside the same paradigm as his teachers had, believing that it was possible to educate a sufficient number of people with a similar worldview as his own. The only major difference between Kršnjavi and his professors in educational approach was in the implicit political messages he created. The majority of his professors had been cosmopolitans, who had wanted to educate their students in political patriotism and loyalty to the Monarchy. Kršnjavi added to this another sub-level of education in matters related to the nation. Nevertheless, Kršnjavi and his professors failed to notice that education was always in arrears, and that the political circumstances were changing faster than the educational system was.