Matija Ban

Matija Ban (Serbian Cyrillic: Матија Бан; 6 December 1818 – 14 March 1903) was a Serbo-Croatian poet, dramatist, and playwright. He is known as one of the earliest proponents of the Serb-Catholic movement in Dubrovnik.

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Matija Ban
Native name	Матија Бан
Born	(1818-12-16)16 December 1818 Dubrovnik, Austrian Empire (now Dubrovnik, Croatia)
Died	14 March 1903(1903-03-14) (aged 84) Belgrade, Kingdom of Serbia (now Belgrade, Serbia)
Occupation	writer, diplomat
Notable works	Cvijeti Srbske (1865); Vanja (1868)

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Ban was born in Petrovo Selo near Dubrovnik, then in the Kingdom of Dalmatia in the Austrian Empire, now in Croatia.^[1] After working as a language teacher in Greek schools in Constantinople and Bursa,^[2] Matija Ban settled in Serbia in 1844. He is commonly regarded as being the first to use the term "Yugoslav", in a poem in 1835.^[3] In 1848 he came from Serbia to Dalmatia to study the state of national sentiment there. He returned to Belgrade in 1850 to teach at the Lyceum.^[4]

His best known literary works include 14 dramas and tragedies related to Slavic history (Miljenko i Dobrila, 1850; Mejrima ili Bošnjaci, 1851; Car Lazar, 1858; Marta Posadnica, 1871; 1880; Jan Hus, 1884, etc).^[5]

Matija Ban was a member of the Society of Serbian Letters (1858), Serbian Learned Society (1864), and Serbian Royal Academy (1892).^[2]