Ljudevit Gaj (July 8th, 1809 Krapina - April 20th, 1872 Zagreb) began writing poems in his early youth, mostly in German. He published the book “Fortress around Krapina” in 1826 and four years later he published the book “A Brief History of Croatian - Slavic Spelling” that was a proposal of a spelling reform of the Croatian language.
He published the popular and well ac¬cepted poem “Still Croatia is not ruined” in 1833 and it became a Croatian patri¬otic song. Two years later he started publishing the newspaper „Novine horvat- ske" ("Croatian newspapers") with its weekly cultural section „Danica horvatska, slavonska i dalmatinska“ ("The Morning Star of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia").
On December 5th he published the manifesto on leaving the kajkavian dialect and the old spelling and accepting the stokavian dialect and the new spelling.