Petar Preradović was born to a family of Serb origin[4][5] in the village of Grabrovnica near the town of Pitomača in modern-day Croatia, which was a part of the Croatian Military Frontier at the time.

He was born to Ivan and Pelagija (née Ivančić) Preradović,[1][6][7] and spent his childhood in his fathers' hometown of Grubišno Polje and Đurđevac.

He enrolled at the military academy in Bjelovar and later Wiener Neustadt where he converted from Eastern Orthodox Church to Catholicism and went on to excel as one of the school's best students.

Thus Preradović, tacitly signed as a Roman Catholic convert from the Orthodox Christianity which was legitimized by a formal act of conversion.

[13] After graduation, he was stationed in Milan where he met Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski, a fellow officer from Croatia, who inspired him to start writing in Croatian.

After Milan, Preradović was posted to Zadar where he wrote his first song in Croatian, Poslanica Špiri Dimitroviću (Epistle to Špiro Dimitrović).

[14][15] Since then, he had systematically continued his poetry in Croatian and has also advocated official acceptance of Ljudevit Gaj's grammar in southern Croatia.

[13] In mid-1871, he participated in the military exercises at Bruck[clarification needed] and was in the same year suggested for the position of Croatian ban, but he was very sick and wrote in a letter that he was not interested.

[18][19] Mayor of Zagreb August Šenoa held an inspired speech and stirred up the hymn to Preradović, which was inaugurated by Ivan Zajc.

The gravestone monument to Petar Preradović, depicting Croatia in a form of a woman that lays flowers on his grave, was made by sculptor Ivan Rendić.

While attending the military academy in Vienna, Preradović began writing his first poems (Der Brand von Neustadt, 1834) in German.