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Amfiteater, letn. 12, št. 1, 2024
UDK 792.072.3(497.4)Kordeš L.
DOI 10.51937/Amfiteater-2024-1/214-246

Abstract
The paper delves into the activity of Leopold Kordeš (1808–1879) in the years before the
March Revolution in the Habsburg Empire and until 1850. It does so through the prism
of the newspaper Carniolia (1838–1844), which, in the German language, was the first
to materialise the (proto)critical treatment of theatre activity in Ljubljana. By following
Kordeš in his roles as writer, editor and organiser, the article emphasises his pioneering
initiative to establish a permanent Slovenian theatre in 1848 and closely examines his
interference with the authority of Janez Bleiweis and the reasons why Kordeš, as the
creator of the first germ of a platform for critical writing about theatre in Ljubljana (and in
Slovenia), got caught in the flow of not remembering and eluded the canonical reception
of personalities in Slovenian history.

Keywords: Leopold Kordeš, Carniolia, theatre report, protocriticism, national political goals,
contours of a shared narrative, dynamics of national relations, Janez Bleiweis, entering
of Slovenian expression onto the stage, Illyrisches Blatt, language as a national attribute,
linguistic choice, initiative for a permanent Slovenian theatre stage 1848–1850, retreat

Primož Jesenko (*1975), MA, is a dramaturg, theatre critic and researcher. Following his
book Dramaturgical Concepts in the Slovenian Theatre 1950–1970 (2008), his monography
The Edge in the Centre: Selected Chapters on Experimental Theatre in Slovenia 1955–1967
(2015) earned him the 2016 Vladimir Kralj Recognition by the Association of Critics and
Theatre Experts of Slovenia. He is the editor of the performing arts section of the journal
Dialogi and a contributor to theatre studies volumes and catalogues. He has participated
in various research projects (TACE – Occupying Spaces: Experimental Theatre in Central
Europe, National Theatre Museum of Slovenia, among others) and numerous international
festivals, exhibitions and colloquia. Since 2012, he is employed at the Slovenian Theatre
Institute and is currently a PhD candidate at the Academy of Theatre, Film, Radio and
Television, University of Ljubljana, with the theme “Critical Discourse Criteria and Theatre
Criticism in Slovenia 1838–1951”.
primoz.jesenko@guest.arnes.si

Protocritic Leopold Kordeš Between Inception
and Impossibility
Primož Jesenko

Summary
The paper discusses the emergence of the intention to write theatre criticism
on Slovenian territories in the second half of the 19th century. The early inception
of critical writing about theatre in Ljubljana in the middle of the 19th century did
not follow the criteria of a systematic critical discourse. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s
theoretical reference, The Hamburg Dramaturgy (Hamburgische Dramaturgie),
served as a foundation. However, the realisation of it was put on stage by the
contemporaneous German theatre community in a way that tended to stall theatre
reflection. The cultural context in Ljubljana before 1848, dominated by the figure
of Janez Bleiweis, was hardly bearable for Leopold Kordeš, but this relationship was
never truly and directly specified. From 1838 until 1850, the years of his activity
in Ljubljana, Kordeš launched and consolidated the protocritical criteria standard
of writing about German theatre in Ljubljana and Celovec, which was taken after
the German journalistic model. Kordeš and Bleiweis, however, operated in parallel,
without connection; in accordance with different sociopolitical aims and regarding
aspirations and their approach to writing, they remained irreversibly separated. In
1849, Kordeš’s voice and presence permeated the written texts of other authors,
such as Jožef Babnik and Vincenc Ferreri Klun, who – in dealing with German theatre
performances of the old custom – consistently denied and rejected the surpassed
stage authority. Due to the diametrically different embeddedness in time and society,
contact between Kordeš and Bleiweis was not possible. With his use of the German
language, the intuitively strong Kordeš awakened an automatic aversion from the
(proto)cultural league in Ljubljana. This is another reason why the stream of nonremembrance snatched Kordeš from the circle of Slovenian historical personalities.
The fact is that Kordeš – after the loosening of national divergences from the March
Revolution in 1848 onwards – immediately presented the first thoroughly organised
proposal for the Slovenian national theatre. However, this ensured no advantage or
priority whatsoever: the precedential landmark competence was to remain in the
slow hands of pragmatic Slovenian nationals under Bleiweis. As of 1850, Kordeš had

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found his way only in stoic withdrawal; next to the “father of the nation”, Bleiweis,
he was gently pushed out of the canon. The Slovenian Age went on.