Matija Čop

Matija Čop (pronounced [maˈtiːja ˈtʃɔp]; 26 January 1797 – 6 July 1835), also known in German as Matthias Tschop, was a Slovene linguist, literary historian and critic.

Čop was born in the small northern Carniolan town of Žirovnica, in what was then the Habsburg Monarchy (now in Slovenia), into a relatively wealthy peasant family. He was sent to Ljubljana for primary and secondary schooling and then studied philosophy at the lyceums of Ljubljana and Vienna for three years. In 1817, he returned from Vienna and attended a priest seminary until 1820, when he left it to become a secondary school teacher in Rijeka, Croatia. In 1822 he moved to Lvov (then also part of the Austrian Empire), when he started working as a teacher at the local lyceum, but was soon promoted to assistant professor at Lviv University.

In 1827 he returned to Ljubljana, when he was offered a job as a secondary school teacher again. In 1828, he accepted the post of librarian at the Lyceum, which he held full-time after 1831.

During his time in Ljubljana, be became a close friend of the poet France Prešeren. He served as his tutor, providing him with information on contemporary developments in European literature.

In 1835, at age 38, Čop drowned while swimming in the Sava River. Prešeren dedicated his major poem The Baptism on the Savica to his late friend.

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