Peter Pavel Kellner (Veľká Poloma, today Gemerská Poloma 1823 – Rimavská Sobota 1873; pen names: Peter Dobroslav Kellner, Peter Záboj Hostinský), journalist, county clerk, editor, writer, and literary theorist, was born into the family of a Lutheran pastor, was schooled in Rožňava (1831-36, 1838-40) and Levoča (1836-38) and at the Lutheran Lyceum in Bratislava, and studied law in Bratislava.

One of the important representatives of the “Štúr generation” of the Slovak National Movement and adherent of the new Slovak literary language known as “Štúr” Slovak, he was involved in the editing of the Slovenské národné noviny (“Slovak national newspaper”) and its literary supplement Orol Tatranský (“The Tatra eagle”, 1845-48); he was briefly (in 1847) its chief editor, as well as president of the largest association of Slovak students, Jednota mládeže slovenskej (“Slovakia Youth Unity”). After the revolution of 1848-9, he worked, until the Austro-Hungarian settlement in 1867, as a state and municipal official in Rožňava, Revúca, Gelnica, Levoča, and Sátoraljaújhely.

After the end of neo-absolutism, Kellner was present when the 1861 Memorandum of the Slovak nation was drawn up. He participated in the creation of the higher Lutheran grammar school in Revúca (1862-75), at that time one of three higher schools in the whole of Hungary providing education in the Slovak language. Kellner was also one of the founding members of the Slovenská Matica (1863-75).

In his poetry, he was one of the minor representatives of the Štúr generation’s Romanticism, which was dominated by the mimicking of folk songs. He tended towards mysticism and messianism, and there was an increased emphasis on this after 1849, as there was in Slovak literature as a whole.

In his economic and national-economic writings, Kellner was a follower of Adam Smith and the Hungarian economist G. Berzeviczy; within the Štúr movement, he belonged to the left wing.

Along with Hurban, he was also one of the main proponents of “Slavic philosophy”, which emphasized the emotional sources of knowledge. In opposition to the Hegelian rationalism of “leadership”, he defended the concept of “vision” under the influence of Schelling, the tradition of Polish messianism, and the older source traditions of Comenius and Jacob Boehme.

In his research into Slavic mythology, he followed in the footsteps of Šafárik’s Slovanské starožitnosti (“Slavic antiquities”) with his Stará vieronauka slovenská (“Old Slovak faith teachings”, 1871), which was conceived in the spirit of mythicizing, Romanticizing, and Slavic science as the “science of vision”. Most of his poetic and dramatic works remained unpublished.