Ján Kollár or “the good qualities of the Slav nation”?

This study calls attention to the genesis of Ján Kollár’s two-part sermon Dobré wlastností Národu Slowanského (1822) which exerted a great influence on the national consciousness of the modern Slav nations. It shows interferencies of German, Slavic and Hungarian cultures and topics in the Central European space. In the second part of the study are discussed parallels between Kollár’s text and the paper by János Horvát a canon of Veszprém. Kollár in his sermons discusses five good qualities of the Slav nation: its godliness, diligence, cheerfulness, love of mother tongue, and forbearance towards other nations. Among the possible prototypes of this sermon belongs a paper by Horváth, entitled ‘On the Religious and Moral Condition of the Hungarians’ in the 1817 volume of Tudományos Gyűjtemény. The manner of adoption can be seen as creative artistic activity, in the course of which Kollár significantly reinterpreted the qualities in question and applied them to the Slav nation.