Matica srpska

The Matica srpska (Serbian Cyrillic: Матица српска) is the oldest cultural-scientific institution of Serbia. Matica Srpska was founded in 1826, in Pest (today a part of Budapest), and moved to Novi Sad in 1864.

History

Of all the Slavic maticas, Matica Srpska was the first to be established in the Habsburg Empire on the ancestral territory of the Rascians (better known as Rascia) at the time of a Serb national and cultural awakening, while under Habsburg and Ottoman thralldom.

In the national awakening, the Serbs of the Serbian Vojvodina played an instrumental role as, by force of historical circumstance, they formed at this period the core of Serb intellectual life. One of the most important tasks facing the Serbs, in advancing cultural-national rebirth, was the solution of the literary language problem, and, as a result of the first fifty years of the 19th century, saw the Vojvodina Serbs engaged in an intense debate about the kind of literary language that their newly revitalized, emerging nation should adopt.