Exhibition
CROATIAN TEACHERS’ HOME
Organizer
Croatian School Museum, Trg Republike Hrvatske 4, 10000 Zagreb www.hsmuzej.hr
On the Behalf of the Organizer
Anita Zlomislić
Author of the Exhibition
Anita Zlomislić
Sonja Gaćina Škalamera
Štefka Batinić
Photography
Croatian School Museum
Fredy Fijačko
Milan Pezelj
Dražen Pomykalo
Dražen Bračić
Marketing
Marijana Bračić
Educational Programme
Ivana Dumbović Žužić
Visual Design of the Exhibition
Damir Gamulin
Antun Sevšek
Organizirano oblikovanje
Technical support
Fredy Fijačko
Nikica Renić
The exhibition and catalogue were financed by the City Office for Culture and Civil Society and the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia.
From May 25 to September 27, 2023
In the flurry of construction that followed the great earthquake of 1880, in just a year (1888 − 1889) the Croatian Teachers’ Home was put up in the western part of the Green Horseshoe, on the south eastern corner of the previous Fairground, today’s Square of the Republic of Croatia.
In mounting the exhibition about the Croatian Teachers’ Home, the Croatian School Museum wishes to recall its architectural and urban values, the historical circumstances of the building, the educational aspirations of the generation of teachers who built it and the work of the Croatian School Museum which has operated in it since 1901, as treasury and custodian of the Croatian school and cultural heritage. The teachers’ associations had an important role in the building of the Home – the Teachers’ Cooperative (Učiteljska zadruga, 1865), the Croatian Educational and Literary Association (Hrvatski pedagoško-književni zbor, 1871) and the Federation of Croatian Teachers’ Associations (Savez hrvatskih učiteljskih društava, 1885), founded with the aims of fostering solidarity and mutual assistance in the teaching community as well as the promotion of the material position, education and professional development of the teachers. The first president of all three associations was the teacher Ivan Filipović (1823 − 1895), whose leadership skills and abilities as organiser made him a natural leader of the Croatian teaching profession and shaper of the direction in which it was to work in the following decades. The newly invigorated teaching community was to enhance its position as an important factor in the cultural and educational life of Croatia.
The Croatian Teachers’ Home had its official opening on September 4, 1889. In the whole of the Austro-Hungarian Empire it was the first example of a building purposely put up for the work of the teaching associations, and, after that in Leipzig, the second in Europe as a whole. The design had been confided to architect Leo Hönigsberg (1861 − 1911). The site of the square selected in which the Teachers’ Home would be among “five large buildings dedicated to the purposes of culture” suited the clients’ concept of the social importance of the edifice they were putting up, and they instructed the architect to endow the Teachers’ Home with a prestigious character. The contractor was the distinguished architect and builder of that era Kuno Waidmann.
Leo Hönigsberg designed the Croatian Teachers’ Home as a freestanding three-storey corner building with a high ground floor. The main façade looked onto University Square, today the Republic of Croatia Square, the longer southern side facing onto Kukovićeva Street, today Hebrangova Street. In both wings and on all floors, including the basement, the distribution of space is founded upon a longitudinally placed corridor, with rooms positioned on each side. The stairs are salient in this uniform sequence for they project in an avant-corps out on the main facade. The stairs are axially deployed in continuation of both entrances into the building, the grand portal at the front and the much more modest entry at the side. The two identically designed staircases ascend in parallel flights with carved stone steps. The vestibule is accessed through the portal on the western facade, this space giving on to the interior of the building via the stairs. In the western-wing ground floor, in the large rooms oriented towards the square there are the biggest rooms, meant for reading rooms and the large hall for gatherings of teachers. On both the first and the second floor there were four apartments meant for rental, two each on each side of the stairs. According to the architectural design, the upper floors replicate the positioning of the large rooms alongside the square and Hebrang Street, while the corridors along the wing provide access to the utility rooms on the courtyard side. The facades of the Croatian Teachers’ Home consist of elements of Renaissance and Baroque revival styles. Hönigsberg made the western façade onto the square and the future theatre the grandest, even though it is shorter than the southern. It was articulated with seven window axes, the central of which contained the main entrance and was projected for emphasis. In the ground floor of this avant-corps was the entry portal into the building, next to which two niches were provided for sculptures. On the upper floors of the avant-corps there were pairs of Corinthian columns, rising the whole height into the attic zone and supporting a triangular pediment. Above the pediment, stretching the whole width, was a wall that bore a figural allegorical group marking the identity of the building. The pyramidally formed stone composition Education is the work of sculptor Dragutin Morak. Behind the avant-corps rose a dome to conclude the summit of the façade. Hönigsberg devoted equal attention inside the building to the decorative handling of walls and interior equipment.
Their awareness of the importance of preserving and caring for the scholastic heritage in Croatia induced members of the Croatian Educational and Literary Association to collect historical materials and records, and, on the model of existing European collections and museums, to found the Croatian School Museum, opened on August 19, 1901. Presented to the public was a permanent display about the historical development of Croatian school education and the accomplishments of its pupils and teachers from the end of the 18th to the beginning of the 20th century. The most valuable unit in cultural history terms was the Paris Room, in which schooling in the Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia was presented at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900. During its 122 years, the Croatian School Museum has presented 570 exhibitions. Interaction with visitors has been very lively, and has been enhanced with other forms of collaboration, like museum workshops, guest appearances, the provision of professional assistance in research and the production of projects. The opening of the Croatian Schooling up to 1918 permanent display in 2000 marked the beginning of the celebration of the centenary of the Museum. In 2023 the Croatian School Museum holds 95,000 individual museum items, systematised into ten collections and a library. Now the Croatian School Museum and its personnel are faced with the new challenges of renovating the building of the Croatian Teachers’ Home after the recent earthquakes, the planning and accomplishment of a new permanent display, the application of contemporary museological conceptions and communications with the public.
The building of the Croatian Teachers’ Home, a protected monument of culture and the home of the Croatian School Museum, was seriously damaged in the earthquakes of 2020. The Croatian Teachers’ Home is not only a valuable example of the architecture of Historicism in Zagreb and a crucial link in the formation of the urban ensemble of the western arm of the Green Horseshoe but also a place of memory of generations of Croatian teachers as well as a treasure house of the material and the intangible heritage of which the Croatian School Museum is the guardian. We look forward to the structural and then the overall renovation of the building respecting all the established values, historical and environmental, as well as material and intangible. Starting from these premises, we hope that the competent institutions will create the preconditions for its museumization and ensure a systematic approach to the overall renovation of the building. Accordingly, as starting measure for its preventive protection, a decision must necessarily be made as to the future purpose of the Croatian Teachers' Home, for there is a place in it only for those tenants who are going to live its aura, building upon it and communicating it to the public