page_title: Adam František Kollár
section_title: Politics
hierarchical_section_title: Adam František Kollár / Significance / Politics
caption_attribution_description: Front page, book by A. F. Kollar, 1764
context_page_description: Adam František Kollár de Keresztén was a Slovak jurist, Imperial-Royal Court Councillor and Chief Imperial-Royal Librarian, a member of Natio Hungarica in the Kingdom of Hungary, a historian, ethnologist, an influential advocate of Empress Maria Theresa's Enlightened and centralist policies. His advancement of Maria Theresa's status in the Kingdom of Hungary as its apostolic ruler in 1772 was used as an argument in support of the subsequent Habsburg annexations of Galicia and Dalmatia. Kollár is also credited with coining the term ethnology and providing its first definition in 1783. Some authors see him as one of the earliest pro-Slovak, pro-Slavic, and pan-Slavic activists in the Habsburg Monarchy.
context_section_description: Adam F. Kollár was closely associated with the centralist policies of Empress Maria Theresa. Some of his publications were commissioned by her Court, although not marked as such, many others espoused its policies. As a native of the Kingdom of Hungary, the Habsburg province that resisted centralization the most, he knew its situation. He devoted his 1764 work De Originibus et Usu perpetuo... (On the Origins and Perpetual Use of the Legislative Powers of the Apostolic Kings of Hungary in Matters Ecclesiastical) to argue for the supremacy of the Habsburgs' rule over the Roman Catholic hierarchy, over the traditional legislative powers of the Kingdom's Diet and, indirectly, over the privileges of its nobility. Kollár supported his and the Habsburgs' position with a copious body of references to the Kingdom's history, his Historiae diplomaticae... from 1762 already contained a large part of the documentation. Among other things, Kollár proposed that the tax-free status of the Kingdom's nobility be abolished. De Originibus et Usu perpetuo... brought about the most explosive event in Kollár's political life. The book caused outrage during the 1764–1765 Diet attended by Maria Theresa and did nothing to reinforce her position. She launched damage control with a ban on further distribution of Kollár's book in the Kingdom of Hungary that included a recall of the sold copies, he was given a hint by the Habsburgs to write an apology, which he did half-heartedly in the form of a defense, and the Vatican put the book on its index librorum prohibitorum where it stayed for the next two centuries.
  The tensions between the Habsburgs and the Kingdom of Hungary remained largely unresolved during Kollár's lifetime and his stance brought him the wrath of his fellow noblemen in the province, but he did not relent. He lived in Vienna, the capital of all of the Habsburg Monarchy, where his views were not merely au courant among its denizens, but actually radiated from the center of power. The publication of Kollár's De Originibus et Usu perpetuo... (1764) was in line and perhaps coordinated with the Habsburgs' goals and he more than retained his status of Maria Theresa's favorite and influential academic partisan. He wrote in favor of the Habsburgs' Enlightened policies, opposed serfdom and advocated religious freedom in the whole monarchy. Maria Theresa turned to him with requests for a large number of position papers relevant to her policy. His arguments in Jurium Hungariæ in Russiam Minorem... published in Latin and German in 1772 were called on by the Habsburgs to support their subsequent annexations of Galicia and Dalmatia.
caption: De Originibus & Usu...