Kukuljević completed his secondary education in gymnasiums in his hometown and in Zagreb. He went to the Military Academy of Krems. As a student, Kukuljević started writing in German. In 1833,[citation needed] he joined the army and became an officer in Vienna three years later.[6] He met Ljudevit Gaj and joined the Illyrian movement in 1837. He was ordered to move to Milan in 1840. In 1842, he resigned from his military duties and returned to Croatia,[7] joining the political fight against Magyarization and censorship. He became one of the leaders of the Illyrian movement.
Politician
Kukuljević was a member of the People's Party and was one of its leading members as early as 1843.[8]
The political activity of Kukuljević can be separated into two periods: until 1850 and from 1860 to 1867. The gap from 1851 to 1860 was caused by the absolutism instituted by Minister Bach, which repressed political life in Croatia. In the first period, he was a partisan of the liberation of Croatia from Austria and Hungary, an uncompromising ideologue promoting revolutionary actions to achieve the unity of the South Slavs. Believing that the South Slavs can be delivered and unified only by force of arms, he lobbied among the Croats and Serbs at the Military Frontier. Swayed by his personality, the frontiersmen asked for the freedom and unity of the South Slav peoples in their People's Requests of spring 1848, referring to him as their inspiration.[citation needed]
Kukuljević was the first to make a speech in Croatian before the Croatian Parliament, on May 2, 1843.[9][10] The speech promoted the struggle for national liberation, asking for Croatian to become the official language in schools and offices, with its gradual introduction in the public life. He also pointed out the danger of replacing Croatian with other languages. Until then, the language of discourse in the parliament was Latin. The speech caused much agitation. It was not an exception, though. All his speeches in the parliament and at county assemblies staunchly advocated the freedom and independence of Croatia, so they could be published only in Branislav, an illegal Illyrian magazine printed in Belgrade. On Kukuljević's urging, the parliament passed the decision to make Croatian the official language in 1847.[9]
He became the chief judge of Varaždin County in 1845. During the Revolutions of 1848, Kukuljević was among the radical democrats. Under his influence, the banJosip Jelačić convened the Croatian Parliament on June 5, 1848, opposing the explicit imperial order. Kukuljević also initiated the Slavic Congress in Prague.
However, the revolutions were crushed and imperial oppression set in. Kukuljević was removed from politics and kept under police surveillance.[citation needed] In the 1850s, his outlook radically changed. The second period of his political activity was the complete opposite of his early anti-Austrian and nationalist sentiments. After he became the prefect of Zagreb County in 1861, he was loyal to Vienna, implementing policies targeted against Croats and the South Slavs and hounding his former friends who remained faithful to their Illyrian ideals.[citation needed]
Despite the sharp turn in his later political career, the early patriotic and historical poems of Kukuljević had a major influence on the patriotic sentiments among the Croats. He founded the Society for Yugoslavian History, edited the magazine called Arhiv za Povjesnicu jugoslavensku (Archive for Yugoslavian History), and published valuable historical monographs. Kukuljević's efforts earned him the title of the "father of modern Croatian historiography".[14]
Kukuljević collected and published many source texts related to the history of Croatia. He wrote a lexicon with 800 artists' biographies. He is considered a pioneer of Croatian scientific bibliography.
Beatrica Frankopan i njezin rod (Beatrice Frankopan and Her Lineage)
Pjesnici hrvatski 16 vieka by Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski, Kršćan. Sadašnjost (reprint), 1983
Borba Hrvatah: S Mongoli i Tatari: Povjestno-Kriticna Razprava by Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski, Nakladom i brzotiskom A.Jakica, 1863
Slavjanke: sa historičkimi primetbami by Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski, Tiskom Franje Župana, 1848
Monumenta historica Slavorum meriodionalium by Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski, Društvo za Jugoslavensku povjest i starine, Brzotiskom narodne tiskarnice dra. Ljudevita Gaja
Cronaca del secolo XVI - mentioned in When ethnicity did not matter in the Balkans: a study of identity in pre-nationalist Croatia, Dalmatia, and Slavonia in the Medieval and Early-Modern Periods by John Van Antwerp Fine[19]
^Šišić, Ferdo (1925). Povijest Hrvata u vrijeme narodnih vladara (in Croatian). Zagreb. pp. 19–20.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link), cited in Šidak 1972, p. 47
^Botica, Stipe (2003), Andrija Kačić Miošić (in Croatian), Zagreb: Školska knjiga, p. 123, ISBN978-953-0-61577-9, OCLC57736273, retrieved 26 November 2011, O Skenderbegu... Zanimljivo je istaknuti da je Ivan Kukuljević-Kacinski na osnovi pevanja fra Andrije Kačića-Miošića napisao tragediju pod naslovom Skenderbeg koja se u rukopisu čuva u Arhivu HAZU [About Skanderbeg... It is interesting to emphasize that Ivan Kukuljević-Kacinski, on the basis of songs of friar Andrija Kačić-Miošić, wrote a tragedy titled Skanderbeg which manuscript is kept in Archive of HAZU
Čičić, Augustin (1930). Monografija o fra Grgi Martiću [A monography about Grgo Martić]. Zagreb: Narodna prosvjeta.
Matasović, Josip (1930). Fojnička regesta [The regesta of Fojnica]. Belgrade: Srpska kraljevska akademija.
Journals
"Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski"(PDF). Vjesnik Arheološkog muzeja u Zagrebu (in Croatian). 11 (1): 97–104. September 1889. Retrieved 27 July 2017.
Kurelac, Miroslav (December 1994). "Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski - život i djelo"(PDF). Radovi Zavoda za znanstveni rad Varaždin (in Croatian) (6–7): 101–116. Retrieved 27 July 2017.
Šidak, Jaroslav (April 1972). "Politička djelatnost Ivana Kukuljevića Sakcinskoga"(PDF). Radovi Zavoda za hrvatsku povijest Filozofskoga fakulteta Sveučilišta u Zagrebu (in Croatian). 2 (1): 47–104. Retrieved 30 July 2017.
