For a long time the role of translations was a neglected topic in Slovenian historiography. The national emancipatory discourse in general concealed the fact, of how necessary and important translations were for the development of a unified standard Slovenian language and thereby also for the development of the collective Slovenian national identity. The prevailing opinion was, as expressed by Josip Stritar: “Translations only for urge! The translation is always only foreign goods." Contrary to this governing narrative in the late 19th and early 20th century on the translation as something less valuable or even bad, the relevant Slovenian and other pedagogues and intellectuals of the 19th century were well aware, that without translations, it will be impossible to write the first modern school books. Already in Organisationsentwurf, which aimed to organise the (higher) educational system on modern principles, it was written that in Slavic languages without sufficient qualitative and diverse literature and lexis “the gap will need to be temporarily filled in with good translations”. Therefore authors of readers have taken on several roles at the same time. Not only did they edit, write and collect school texts, but they also extensively translated texts of existing readers (mainly German and Czech). This paper will give a fresh perspective on the emergence of the first modern Slovenian school books, a link between the Slovenian development with the monarchy area and (often undeclared) culture of translation.