Drava u očima jozefinista
The Drava River, seen by Josephinists

Summary/Abstract: Friedrich Wilhelm von Taube, an Austrian patriot, while writing his Beschreibung of Slavonia and Syrmia in 1777, ended one of his chapters: »It was only after Joseph II made this country happy paying his visit for the third time, that roads, dams and small bridges were reconstructed.« Within a decade deviding Taube, an unknown T. A., author of a Beschreibung of the Warasdiner Generalate (1783.) and Franz Stefan Engel, author of another regional Beschreibung (1786) from each other, excitings about the Joseph II’s ‘grand designs’ almost disappeaered. But, it was not all the same with a need to contribute to the regional bonum commune, whenever it was possible whithin a horizon of a »conservative modernization«. Taube, T.A. and Engel, while writing about the region, actually shared an approach to the description of the region, in josephinistic terms. On the other side, Taube, writing down before Joseph II was crownd, and T. A. and Engel after it, were witnessing at the same time changes towards Joseph II's reformist obessessions, put down their descriptions in terms of another approach to imperatives of 'conservative modernization' of the Drava River Valley, which was relying much more on traditions than on the unprevisible modernistic fervour. Both rivers, Drava and Sava, were promising for a much better future of the people in the region, but the rivers as they were at that time were depriving contemporaries down to the level of a mere survival. Chances of the Drava valley were much better for the futur than in the case of the Sava valley, due to the fact that the DravaRiver was a direct link to the Central Europe, in opposition to the river Sava, which was belonging both to the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire.

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