The Collector’s Canon: Ivan Ulčnik and Amateur Prosopography in Zagreb (1934–1955)
Ivan Ulčnik (1880–1963) was not a professional historian, but a municipal tax official in the municipality of Zagreb, the founder and long-serving president of the Society of Zagreb Citizens and a tireless collector. His archive, comprising seventeen boxes of newspaper clippings, photographs, postcards, and notes, has been described as a “small encyclopedia of Zagreb”. Between 1934 and 1955, he published approximately seventy biographical and thematic articles in the journal Zagreb (Review of the Society of Zagreb Citizens), devoted to mayors, parliamentary representatives, entrepreneurs, artists, noble families.
This paper examines Ulčnik’s contributions as a form of amateur prosopography and as a practice of shaping Zagreb’s urban collective memory. The corpus is analysed on two levels: first, through the individuals and themes that Ulčnik considered worthy of remembrance, and second, through the ways in which he represented them. The individuals are classified according to the social and professional category, geographical origin, gender, period of activity, and type of entry. The articles themselves are analysed with regard to Ulčnik’s criteria of selection, narrative strategies, and use of sources. The paper thus seeks to demonstrate how Ulčnik’s choices contributed to the formation of a Zagreb-based collector’s canon and to explore how he understood and evaluated the urban and national elites of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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Veronika Novoselac is Teaching Assistant at the Department of History of the Catholic University of Croatia in Zagreb. She graduated in History at the Catholic University of Croatia and in Communication Studies. She is currently enrolled in the postgraduate (doctoral) program in History.
E-mail: veronika.novoselac@unicath.hr
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Ines Sabotič is Full Professor at the University Department of History – Catholic University of Croatia. She graduated, obtained her master’s and PhD at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. She has been employed since 2012 at the University, where she served as Vice-rector for Academic Affairs, Head of the Department of History, Head of the Doctoral Programme in History and has taken on other responsibilities.
E-mail: ines.sabotic@unicath.hr
