Memories of a Ban, The Jelačić Legacy

Marking the 150th anniversary of the death of Ban Jelačić (1801 – 1859), the Croatian History Museum presents the numerically biggest and one of the most important family legacies kept in the collections of the museum. This is the Legacy of the gentle, baronial and countly branch of the second line of the Jelačićes, a Legacy that started its museum life in the first years of the activity of the National Museum in Zagreb, and whose greater part tells, above all, of life and role of ban Josip Jelačić.

Josip Jelačić (Petrovaradin, October 16 1801 – Zagreb, May 20 1859), ban of the Kingdom of Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia, was active at the time of the national movements and revolutionary ferments, the beginnings of the shaping of modern civil society. As ban of the Kingdom of Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia, civil administrator of Dalmatia and Rijeka and commander of the military frontier regiments, for a short time in 1848 he provided a formal unification for the Croatian lands within the Habsburg Empire. A sign of Jelačić's public activity aimed at the development of national, cultural and educational institutions, the only possible activity at the time of Bach's absolutism, is constituted by the ban's personal gift to the Museum in 1856. Presenting a portrait of himself to the National Museum, Jelačić not only with his own example wished to draw attention to the importance of preserving the heritage, but in a way initiated the future formation of the Jelačić Legacy.