József Ficzkó


József Ficzkó or Fitzkó was a Slovene Roman Catholic priest and writer. After becoming a priest in the village of Peresznye near the current Hungarian-Austrian border, he became one of the most important Burgenland Croatian writers of his time.

Biography

Ficzkó was born in Boreča, then part of Hungary, which became part of the Austrian Empire in 1804. His parents were Miklós Ficzkó and Ilona Ficzkó. He studied in Szombathely with the help of Miklós Küzmics, a Prekmurje Slovene writer, and was ordained in 1797.
From 1802 until his death, Ficzkó was the priest in the small village of Peresznye, near Kőszeg, in an area in western Hungary in which many Burgenland Croats lived. Here he learned the local dialect of Croatian 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.

Works