Jernej Kopitar, also known as Bartholomeus Kopitar (21 August 1780 – 11 August 1844), was a Slovene linguist and philologist working in Vienna. He also worked as the Imperial censor for Slovene literature in Vienna. He is perhaps best known for his role in the Serbian language reform started by Vuk Stefanović Karadžić, where he played a vital role in supporting the reform by using his reputation and influence as a Slavic philologist. Early life Kopitar was born in the small Carniolan village of Repnje near Vodice, in what was then the Habsburg monarchy and is now in Slovenia. After graduating from the lyceum in Ljubljana, he became a private teacher in the house of baron Sigmund Zois, a renowned entrepreneur, scientist and patron of arts. Kopitar later became Zois' personal secretary and librarian. During this period, he became acquainted with the circle of Enlightenment intellectuals that gathered in Zois' mansion, such as the playwright and historian Anton Tomaž Linhart, the poet and editor Valentin Vodnik, and philologist Jurij Japelj. Career as a censor and linguist In 1808, he moved to Vienna, where he studied law. At the same time, he developed an interest in the comparative analysis of the Slavic languages, to which he would devote all his later life. He became employed as a librarian and later an administrator at the Vienna Court Library. He later become the chief censor for books written in Slavic languages and Modern Greek. Among European linguists, he was considered a valued scientist and thinker. Particularly important is his correspondence with the Bohemian philologist Josef Dobrovský, his spiritual father, and later with the Serbian philologist Vuk Karadžić. In 1808, he wrote in German and published the first scientific Slovene grammar, titled Grammatik der Slavischen Sprache in Krain, Kärnten und Steyermark (Grammar of the Slavic language in Carniola, Carinthia, and Styria). In his work Glagolita Clozianus (1836), he published the first critically revised, translated, and annotated version of the Freising Manuscripts, the oldest known work in Slovene and the first work in any Slavic language written in the Latin alphabet. In the same work, he advanced the Pannonian Theory of the origin of Common Slavic, which is a theory that is no longer accepted by other scientists. Under the influence of the efforts of a group of contemporary Carinthian Slovene philologists, especially Urban Jarnik and Matija Ahacel, Kopitar sought to educate a new generation