RUDOLF HORVAT O SVOJEM RUKOPISU POVIJEST GRADA VARAŽDINA
RUDOLF HORVAT ABOUT HIS MANUSCRIPT THE HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF VARAŽDIN

Summary/Abstract: The most comprehensive and most cited work on the history of “the Baroque Town” is undoubtedly the best description of The History of the Town of Varaždin by the renowned Croatian historian Rudolf Horvat (Koprivnica, 14 March 1873 – Zagreb, 25 May 1947). The manuscript was meant to be printed on the 700th anniversary of the founding of the town of Varaždin (in 1909), but the plan failed; it was only printed in 1993. In 2017 it was seven decades since the author’s death, and in 2018 we marked 125 years since his birth and a quarter of a century since the publishing of his historiographic work. With the help of rich and comprehensive archive material in State Archive in Varaždin and Croatian State Archives in Zagreb, we get the full picture about the making of his work. Reading the minutes from town assembly sessions, the letters by vice-mayor and Education board, and the correspondence between town officials and Horvat, we see how ardent the author was in conducting a comprehensive research of the history of Varaždin, in collecting the materials for the future historiographic work, in his vision regarding the work’s content, and in his persistence in negotiating the fee he deemed reasonable for his 30-years effort. We can also see the commissioner’s efforts to discuss the reasonable fee with scientific and publishing institutions, in order to agree a fee in accordance with the poor economic situation of that day and age; they negotiated the cost of printing of his future historiographic work with different printing offices having sent them similar examples of historiographic works, including Horvat’s own. The commissioner was keen to involve other competent people in this process – representatives and non-representatives of the town assembly of Varaždin – who were supposed to use their professional and work experience and draw an expert conclusion about the manuscript by means of three multimembered committees. Horvat had worked on it for almost thirty years. He handed over his manuscript in parts in March 1934, 1935, 1936, August 1938 and in the Spring of 1939; he used to com to Varaždin in person or send the text via the mayor Novaković or one of his close friends. It is thought he planned to publish the manuscript in multiple volumes: the first part, general and political history, was published in 1993, whereas the topic-based, second part with separate chapters has never been published. This text titled Doctor Rudolf Horvat: The Cultural History of the Town of Varaždin, together with the published first part, is kept in the Varaždin City Museum. Wanting to give Horvat the time for research and writing of his historiographic work, the town authorities, with the help of the former governor of Croatia Ban Pavao Rauch, sent the author to the then Royal State Archive in Zagreb, where he studied archive materials, and helped him financially to continue his research in Austrian and Hungarian archives, as well as to publish the study Varaždin in the Late 16th Century. In the Royal State Archive in Zagreb (today’s Croatian State Archives), Horvat had the time and opportunity to research not only the history of Varaždin, but also the history of other Croatian towns, which allowed him to write historiographic works about these towns as well. That way the representatives of the Varaždin town assembly from 1909 made a small contribution to the development of historiography in Croatia. Regarding that and keeping in mind that Horvat worked on the manuscript for almost thirty years up until 1939, it is necessary to compare this manuscript in the context of historiographic works from the 1930s.

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