The paper looks into the German language manuscript notebook and excerpt book of Samuel Ferjenčík (1793 – 1855) from the 1840s. The authors comprehensively reconstructed the sources of notes and excerpts, although the manuscript, with only a few exceptions, contained no references. The German language originals and their adaptations in Ferjenčík’s manuscript were analysed, especially substitutions, contextual transpositions, insertions, etc. The paper used the concepts of intertextuality, hyper-textuality, transformation, and imitation to interpret the text. The research results provide an insight into the Ferjenčík’s thoughts during the preparation and organization of the political text Slovenský prestolný prosbopis [Slovak petition to the throne] from 1842, written not long before the revolutionary events of 1848 – 1849. It also examines the reading of this Slovak intellectual of his time, the German language sources he used and the problems he tried to grasp through parallels and analogies.
The article addresses the issue of national identity from the perspective of the Slovak theologian and writer Samuel Ferjenčík (1793 – 1855) primarily on the basis of his recently discovered manuscript notes. Although these notes resemble a mixture of newspaper clippings, quotations, snippets of thoughts, aphorisms, subjective remarks, and other similar material, they are nevertheless evidence of the period (1840 – 1842) during which the question of national identity was experiencing an extraordinary upsurge among the peoples of the region (Central Europe, more precisely the territory of the Habsburg monarchy before the revolutions of 1948). In the introduction, the article emphasises the role of German language texts from the multi-ethnic cultural space of Central Europe (also) for German studies abroad. Subsequently, the essay examines Ferjenčík’s career from his studies in Jena, Germany, to his political involvement in the preservation of Slovak identity in the context of forced Magyarization in the first half of the nineteenth century.
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