SOURCE: Cooper, Henry R., Jr. “Jernej Kopitar and the Beginning of South Slavic Studies.” In American Contributions to the Ninth International Congress of Slavists, Vol. II: Literature, Poetics, History, edited by Paul Debreczeny, pp. 97-111. Columbus, OH: Slavica Publishers, 1983.

In the following essay, Cooper offers evidence to support the claim that Kopitar is the “Father of South Slavic Studies.”

Hier entscheiden facta, nicht Räsonnements! 

(Kopitar to Dobrovský)

Scholarly paternity, unlike its human correlate, often matters more to distant generations than to the immediate offspring. In the rapid changes and advances which characterized Slavic studies during the first decades of its existence (approximately 1790-1850¹), the origination of ideas frequently counted for far less than their application to the popular ideologies of the day. The grateful “son” paying tribute to his intellectual “father” is in the scholarly works of that time a less usual figure than the rebellious youth...