Speeches of bishop Strossmayer published till 1868 mediated to his fellow-citizens some components of emerging national-integration and cultural paradigm. Central European context of which was based on liberal middle-class principles, symbolic of significant institutions, opposition to German prejudices about Slavs and on complex relation to actual criteria of largeness that people should reach to become equal with other cultural European nations. Principle of emergence of nation as expansion or integration follows from this criteria. If we read Strossmayer´s speeches in context of three Hobsbawn´s criteria of the 19th century national classification, it becomes obvious that Strossmayer built his model of possible South-Slavic cultural self-consciousness mostly upon different traditions of Croatian people, on whose domination, on the model of already constructed national identities (German or Italian for example), should be based some future cultural community.