József Ficzkó

József Ficzkó or Fitzkó (Burgenland Croatian: Jožef Ficko) (15 March 1772 – 28 November 1843) was a Slovene born Roman Catholic priest and writer. After becoming priest in the village of Peresznye near the actual Hungarian-Austrian border he became one of the most important Burgenland Croatian writers of his time.

Ficzkó was born in Boreča (now Prekmurje, Slovenia), then part of Hungary, which from 1804 was part of the Austrian Empire. His parents were Miklós (Prekmurian: Mikloš) Ficzkó and Ilona (Jelena) Ficzkó. He studied in Szombathely (German: Steinamanger) with the help of Miklós Küzmics, a prekmurian writer, and was later consecrated in 1797.

From 1802 until his death Ficzkó was priest in the small village of Peresznye, near Kőszeg, in an area in Western Hungary in which many Burgenland Croats lived, as they were called later (the term Burgenland for the westernmost part of Hungary, inhabited by Germans and Croats and separated from Hungary in 1921 according to the Treaty of Trianon, was created after 1918). Here he learned the Croatian language in the version (or dialect) spoken there and wrote books in Burgenland Croatian. Ficzkó was a significant writer working in the standard language of the Burgenland Croats. His style was known as the Baroque.

Ficzkó rejected panslavism, illyrism, the new Serbo-Croatian language and Gaj's alphabet. Instead, he supported using a clear Burgenland Croatian language to be understood by the people of his region.

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