Pavel Jozef Safarik - Prague, Czech Republic
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Pavel Jozef Safarik (13 May 1795 – 26 June 1861) was a Slovak philologist, poet, one of the first scientific Slavists; literary historian, historian and ethnographer.
Waymark Code: WMTNRM
Location: Hlavní město Praha, Czechia
Date Posted: 12/19/2016
Views: 31
Pavel spent his childhood in the region of Kobeliarovo in northern Gemer (Gömör) characterized by attractive nature and rich Slovak culture. In 1805–08 Šafárik studied at a "lower gymnasium" (in some sources described as Protestant school which was just changed into a middle Latin school) in Rožnava (Rozsnyó), where he learned Latin, German and Hungarian.
In 1815 he began to study at the University of Jena, where he turned from a poet into a scientist. In 1817, on his way back home, he visited Leipzig and Prague. In Prague, where he was searching for a tutor job, he spent one month and joined the literary circle, whose members were Josef Dobrovsky, Josef Jungmann and Vaclav Hanka, whom Šafárik thus got to know in person.
Between the summer of 1817 and June 1819, he worked as a tutor in Pressburg (Bratislava). In April 1819, his friend Ján Blahoslav Benedikti helped him to get a doctor's degree, which he needed in order to become headmaster of a new gymnasium in Novi Sad (Újvidék), in the south of the Kingdom of Hungary.
In 1832 he finally decided to leave Novi Sad and tried to find a teacher or librarian job in Russia, but again without success. In 1833, with the help of Ján Kollár and on invitation of influential friends in Prague who promised to finance him, he went to Prague, where he spent the remainder of his life. During his entire stay in Prague, especially in the 1840s, his very existence depended on the 380 guldens he received annually from his Czech friends under the condition which explicitly expressed František Palacký: "From now on, anything you write, you will write it in the Czech language only." Šafárik was an editor of the journal Svetozor (1834–1835). In 1837 poverty compelled him to accept the uncongenial office of censor of Czech publications, which he abandoned in 1847. Between 1838 and 1842 he was first editor, later conductor, of the journal Casopis Ceského musea, since 1841 he was a custodian of the Prague University Library. In Prague, he published most of his works, especially his greatest work Slovanské starožitnosti ("Slavonic Antiquities") in 1837. He also edited the first volume of the Výbor (selections from old Czech writers), which appeared under the auspices of the Prague literary society in 1845. To this he prefixed a grammar of the Old Czech language.
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Plaque Inscription: Pavel Josef Šafarík 1795 – 1861; venoval Sbor pro památníky