Dositej Obradović
Serbian author. Born 1739/1740, died 1811.
Obradović wanted to be a monk, but was disappointed with the cloistered life, and ran away from the monastery in 1760. Over the course of the following years, he wandered all over the Balkans and the rest of Europe.
His oeuvre is small, but expresses (with an almost programmatic completeness) the full spectrum of the European Enlightenment's concepts. His magnum opus, Life and Experiences, published in Leipzig in 1783, followed the new custom of writing in a language approaching the everyday vernacular, as did a collection of fables published around the same time.
As founder of the "Great School" in Belgrade/Beograd, in 1808 (later to become the University of Belgrade), and of a seminary school, Obradović was a significant figure in Serbian cultural history.