engleski

Representing the Capital of a Nation - Zagreb City Museum between Austria-Hungary and Yugoslavia (1907-1925)

In the nineteenth century, Croatia was a semi- autonomous province in the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and Zagreb its capital city and the main national and political centre. Since most of the Croatian provincial governments in the so-called Dualist Period of the Austro- Hungarian history (1867-1918) were formed by pro- Hungarian parties, the Zagreb City Government took on itself to promote the Croatian national identity by launching and supporting cultural projects and initiatives. It was in this atmosphere that the Zagreb City Museum was founded in 1907 as a new institution where narratives on the history and culture of the city started to be shaped on cultural and historical evidence that also served to represent the Croatian nation and national identity formation. This continued in 1918 when Croatia found itself stripped of all autonomy in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Yugoslavia. The significance of the Zagreb City Museum and the local government in sustaining and reinforcing the Croatian national discourse came again to the fore in 1925 with the celebration of the millennial anniversary of the Croatian kingdom, which included a great retrospective exhibition. By providing a political and cultural context of the period spanning 1907 and 1925, the paper explores the main protagonists and the underlying ideologies behind the foundation and the early work of the Zagreb City Museum that determined its national agenda.

Zagreb City Museum ; Zagreb City Government ; Croatian millennial exhibition ; national identity

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