Kollár, Jan

Born July 29, 1793, in the village of Mosovce, Slovakia; died Jan. 24, 1852, in Vienna. Czech and Slovak poet and cultural figure. Son of a peasant. Graduated from the University of Jena (1819) and became a priest. In 1849 he began to teach Slavic archaeology at the University of Vienna.

Kollár worked in both Czech and Slovak culture and was influenced by the ideas of the national renaissance. His first collection, Poems, was published in 1821. His main work is the narrative poem Daughter of Glory (1824; supplementary edition, 1832), in which he extolled the centuries-old struggle of the Slavs against foreign oppressors. The ideas of patriotism, enlightenment, humanism, and friendship of Slavic peoples expressed in the poem exerted great influence on the development of social thought among the Czechs and the Slovaks.

Kollár’s treatise On the Literary Bonds Among the Slavs (1836) was devoted to the relations of the Slavic peoples and cooperation among them. He also studied folklore and collected Slovak folk songs (in cooperation with P. J. Safank); he published a two-volume edition The National Songs or Lay Songs of the Hungarian Slovaks . . . (1834–35).