Page 167 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2026 Skladateljska društva nekoč in danes.../Composers’ Societies Past and Present...

Between Music and Politics: The Role of Composers in Musical Societies …
conducted – the capital of Zagreb was united into a single city in 1850, and
22
the Zagreb diocese was elevated to the status of an archdiocese in 1852.
Furthermore, the Austrian Allgemeine Grundgesetz was introduced, the su-
preme court for Croatia – Tabula banalis – was established, the judiciary
system was modernised (although, often only in theory and not in every-
day court practice), and land registers and cadastres started being conduct-
ed more meticulously and were better regulated. 23
In conjunction with these measures, the abolition of serfdom, the de-
velopment of national identity through the first half of the century, and the
elements of modernisation introduced by Neo-absolutism laid the foun-
dation for the development of bourgeois society in the second half of the
century.
After Neo-absolutism was abolished in 1859, the constitutional order
was reintroduced in the entire Habsburg Empire with the October Diploma
(1860) and February Patent (1861), which in turn enabled the reinstitution
of parliamentary political and public life. The period of the 1860s in Croa-
tia was characterised by attempts to define Croatian relations towards both
Austria and Hungary. At “The Great Parliament of 1861”, the first to be con-
vened after 1848, three different political stances emerged that would define
the Croatian political space until the end of the Habsburg/Austro-Hungar-
ian Empire. The National Party took the stance that all legal and actual re-
lations with Hungary had ended in 1848, and were in favour of re-estab-
lishing them only under the condition that Hungary recognised the Triune
Kingdom’s state autonomy and territorial integrity. In contrast, the Union-
ists deemed that there had been no legal break of ties with Hungary in 1848,
and advocated for the re-establishment of a real union, while at the same
time opposing any connection with the Austrian lands. The third group,
the Party of Rights, advocated for the independence of Croatia, whether it
be a complete independence, as favoured by Ante Starčević, or the existence
of joint affairs within the Monarchy, but without establishing central state
bodies, the possibility accepted by Eugen Kvaternik. Having the majority,
the National Party’s stance was officially accepted as the Parliament’s con-
clusion, i.e. that the union between the Croatian Kingdom and the Kingdom

22 Tomislav Markus, “Trojedna Kraljevina Hrvatska, Slavonija i Dalmacija od 1790. do
1918.,” in Temelji moderne Hrvatske. Hrvatske zemlje u dugom 19. stoljeću, eds. Jas-
na Turkalj and Vlasta Švoger (Zagreb: Matica hrvatska, 2016), 11; Pavličević, Povijest
Hrvatske, 265–6.
23 Mirjana Gross, Prema hrvatskome građanskom društvu (Zagreb: Globus, 1992), 87–
9.

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