Ivan Mažuranić: The Writer and Ban of the Common People Who Modernized Croatia

Ivan Mažuranić became the Croatian ban on September 20, 1873. He is remembered in history by the nickname ‘ban of the common people’. He did not receive this nickname due to his political program, but because of his origin. Mažuranić did not come from a noble family, but from a middle-class family from Novi Vinodolski. He was the only Croatian ban of non-noble origin.

However, this fact is important because it explains why his name is still remembered today. Mažuranić’s rise to the head of Croatia symbolized the penetration of the educated middle class into the top of political life. Of the ten bans who governed Croatia from his appointment until the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918, all belonged to the nobility or aristocracy, so the nickname ‘ban of the common people’ remained permanently associated only with him.

A Turn Towards Modern Croatia

Even more important is what he accomplished in the position of ban. His seven-year banate turned into one of the most reformist periods in Croatian history of the 19th century. The responsibility of the ban to the Parliament was introduced, the administration and judiciary were separated, the independence of judges was strengthened, and the foundations of a more modern and efficient state administration were created. Historians consider Mažuranić’s period a turning point in the construction of modern civil Croatia.

A special place among his reforms is occupied by education. In 1874, compulsory primary education was introduced, and the same year saw the opening of the modern University of Zagreb. This made education more accessible to broader layers of the population, and Croatia gained institutions without which its cultural and scientific development is hard to imagine today.

The Episode with Croatia Insurance

Since 1874, Mažuranić advocated for the establishment of a Croatian insurance company. The central government delayed issuing a permit for ten years, so the Croatia insurance cooperative (today’s Croatia osiguranje) was established only in 1884. In the meantime, Ban Mažuranić resigned in 1880 due to delays in renewing the financial agreement and the annexation of the Military Frontier to Ban’s Croatia. The problem was in the distribution of taxes between Zagreb and Pest. Essentially, it is the same logic of the central government as in the case of establishing a domestic insurance company.

Mažuranić was also a writer, linguist, and the author of the famous poem ‘Death of Smail-Aga Čengić’. He left a number of words in the Croatian language that are used daily, including ice cream, umbrella, rhinoceros, and metropolis.

The Mažuranić Family

Although he did not come from the nobility, the Mažuranić family remains inscribed in large letters in Croatian history. Even the Zagreb square known as ‘Mažuranac’ is not the Square of Ivan Mažuranić, but the Square of Antun, Ivan, and Vladimir Mažuranić. This may be a small historical injustice towards the ban of the common people, but his brother Antun and son Vladimir also deserve mention. Antun was a linguist, grammarian, and lexicographer, a participant in the national revival, and one of the founders of Matica ilirska. He laid the foundations of modern Croatian accentology, dialectology, and textology. Vladimir was a lexicographer, writer, lawyer, historian, and an academic of JAZU.

The third of the four Mažuranić brothers, Matija, is not unknown either. His travelogue A View of Bosnia is considered one of the most important works of Croatian travel literature of the 19th century. In a popular manner, without any external motives or literary influences, as a good connoisseur of folk creativity, he wrote a work that is read both as an adventure and as a realistic depiction of the experienced and seen. This also helped his brother in writing Death of Smail-Aga Čengić.

And, last but not least, Ivan’s granddaughter (daughter of Vladimir Mažuranić) is the renowned writer Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić.

On the One Hundred Kuna Banknote

Thus, paradoxically, the middle-class family of the ban of the common people left a deeper mark than many noble lineages with a long tradition. And Ivan Mažuranić, with his seven-year reformist banate, stands alongside the slightly older ban Josip Jelačić. With his versatility from politics to linguistics to literature, he is one of the key Croats of the 19th century.

Interestingly, the man who marked the Croatian national revival and linguistic identity ended up on the banknote of the national currency, and disappeared from it precisely at the moment when Croatia transferred part of its monetary sovereignty to the eurozone.