As a secondary school student he was an active member of the Slavonic Reading Club (Slovanska čitalnica), the first national society in Maribor. After he had been awarded the doctor`s degree in Strasbourg in 1873, he worked as a tutor in Budapest, Vienna and in England, where he met many writers and statesmen. He was considered one of the most educated Slovenes of that time. In 1903 he returned to Maribor. Intellectuals gathered at his estate below Kalvarija. He was a patron of many Slovene pupils, students and artists. In 1924 he bequeathed his property for grants to the then established University of Ljubljana (Turner scholarship) and his vast library to the Historical Society of Maribor.