He was born in Planica above Fram in 1842. He attended primary school in Fram and continued his education in Maribor. His classmates included Karel Glaser and Josip Sernec. Davorin Trstenjak is worth mentioning among his teachers. He improved his German, English, French and Italian in secondary school.

After attending the University of Vienna, he moved to England where he worked as a loan collector. After settling in London, he began teaching the sons of London bankers, the Biedermanns. He came into contact with John Stuart Mill, Charles Dickens, Benjamin Disraeli and others. He graduated from Classical Philology in Vienna in 1869 and from Law in Strasbourg in 1873.

When he returned to Maribor in 1903, he became involved in the life of the society. The following year he became president of the Historical Society for Slovenian Styria and supported it financially. He followed the ongoing excavations at Pohorje, and after the end of the First World War, he advocated respect for the cultural heritage of both Germans and Slovenes.

He bequeathed his rich correspondence with manuscripts and library to the Historical Society, and this material is now preserved in the Maribor Regional Archives, the Maribor University Library and partly also in the Maribor Regional Museum.