He is mainly remembered for his role in the Illyrian movement led by Ljudevit Gaj which promoted unity among South Slavs and called for Croatia's independence at the time when the country was part of Austria-Hungary.

He worked as an advisor to Josip Jelačić at the Zagreb military command and was a member of the Croatian parliament's legislation committee which created the bills on the establishment of the Croatian army and the abolishment of the Military Frontier and its merger with Croatia.

During the later years of Alexander von Bach's absolutism (1849–1859) he held the post of ministerial secretary in Vienna (appointed in 1856) and from 1862 to 1867 he worked as an advisor with the Croatian Court Chancellery (German: Hofkanzlei).

He also wrote several patriotic poems, the best known of which is Uskrsnuće Jelačića bana (The Resurrection of Ban Jelačić), published in December 1866, which was later adapted into a well-known Croatian Reveille song called "Ustani, bane".

It was a lament about the condition of the ignored, backward, and divided South Slavic peoples, who in the first half of the 19th century still lived under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg dynasty and the Turkish empire.