Anton Bezenšek

Who was Anton Bezenšek?

Anton Toma Bezenšek was a Slovene linguist, publicist, shorthand expert, and lecturer, who spent most of his life in Bulgaria. He is known as the scholar who adapted the Gabelsberger shorthand system to the South Slavic languages.

Bezenšek was born in a small village of Bezenškovo Bukovje near Frankolovo, Slovenia, in what was then the Austrian Duchy of Styria. He attended the prestigious Celje First Grammar School high school at the age of 12 and graduated with honours. In 1873 he was elected for a chairman of a school student organization, and learnt the Croatian adaptation of Gabelsberger Shorthand. Later, he entered the University of Zagreb, where he studied Greek, Latin, and Bulgarian in the philosophy faculty. As a student, he delivered a shorthand course, which was attended by 236 people in 5 years. After graduating, Bezenšek visited Prague, Dresden and Ljubljana, obtained a teaching permission, and worked in Zagreb as a chief stenographer in Parliament. In his 1890 biographic notes, he expressed ideas about a common South Slavic shorthand system: "It would be of benefit to the spread of shorthand among South Slavs to establish a South-Slavic Shorthand Union, like the German or Northern Shorthand Union, [...] it should have an agency of its own and should hold an annual congress once in Zagreb, once in Belgrade, once in Sofia, once in Ljubljana."