Anton Tomaž Linhart

Anton Tomaž Linhart (11 December 1756 – 14/15 July 1795) was a Carniolan playwright and historian, best known as the author of the first comedy and theatrical play in general in Slovene, Županova Micka (Micka, the Mayor's Daughter). He is also considered the father of Slovene historiography, since he was the first historian to write a history of all Slovenes as a unit, rejecting the previous concept which focused on single historical provinces. He was the first one to define the Slovenes as a separate ethnic group and set the foundations of the Slovene ethnography.

Linhart was born in the Upper Carniolan town of Radovljica, at the time part of the Habsburg Monarchy. His father was a Czech hosiery manufacturer who had moved to Carniola from Bohemia. His step mother was a Carniolan (Slovenian) noblewoman from the family Kappus (also Kapus) nob. Pichelstein, a prosperous family which had for centuries lived at Kamna gorica in Upper Carniola, where the family owned an iron foundry and an iron mine since the late Middle Ages, perhaps since the 12th century. Marcus Antonius Kappus nob. Pichelstein (1657-1717), worked as a Jesuit missionary in Sonora (i.e., the border region between today’s United States and Mexico). From there he wrote letters to his friends in Vienna and to his relatives in Carniola In these letters he described discoveries made by research expeditions in Arizona and California and described living conditions, climate etc. Carolus Josephus Kappus nob. Pichelstein, a nephew of Marcus Antonius, was member of the Academia Operosorum, which was founded in Ljubljana in 1693 after the example of similar academies in Italy. Vladimir Kapus nob. Pichelstein (1885-1943), a Slovene writer and publisher, was also from Kapus family.

Linhart attended primary school in his home town and then went to Ljubljana. He studied trading and finance in Vienna. Before finishing his studies, he also spent a short time in the Stična monastery in Lower Carniola. After returning to Ljubljana, he was hired as an archivist by the bishop of Ljubljana. He later also worked as a chief book revisor, school commissioner, ending up as secretary in the Habsburg administration of the district of Carniola.

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