Croatian History

Dragutin Antun Parcic (1832-1902) was a Glagolitic priest, linguist, philologist, and lexicographer born in the lovely town of Vrbnik on the island of Krk, important site of Croatian Glagolism. He wrote extensive Croatian – Italian and Italian – Croatian dictionaries (“Rjecnik ilirsko – talijanski,” Zadar, 1858, its last edition was printed under the title “Rjecnik hrvatsko – talijanski,” 1901; “Vocabolario Italiano – Slavo,” Zadar 1858-68). His 1901 dictionary contains 90,000 words on 1200 pages. He also published a grammar of…

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Ivan Dezman (1841-1873) physician, a medical writer and lexicographer, published the first Croatian medicinal dictionary (Rjecnik lijecnickog nazivlja; Croatian – German, German – Croatian) in 1868 in Zagreb. The reader may be surprised to see such a quantity of old dictionaries of the Croatian language (various grammars are even more numerous). See a remark on the “Declaration about the Name and Position of the Croatian Literary Language“, written by outstanding intellectuals and most important cultural institutions in Zagreb in 1967….

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Safvet-beg Basagic (1870-1934) was outstanding Muslim-Croatian poet, orientalist, historian and lexicographer. He studied oriental languages and history in Vienna, where he defended his thesis in 1910. His most important work is “Znameniti Hrvati Bosnjaci i Hercegovci (The famous Croatian Bosniaks and Herzegovinians), published by Matica hrvatska (Matrix Croatica) in Zagreb in 1931. In this lexicon he presented nearly 700 biographies. He occupied the position of curator of the Zemaljski muzej in Sarajevo (1919-1927), and was also vice-president of the Sabor…

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The first Croatian general Encyclopaedia was prepared in Osijek in 1887-1890 (in two volumes, 600 pages each, from A to G). The project was initiated by Ivan Zoch (1843-1921) and Josip Mencin (1856-1900). Ivan Zoch was the Slovak by birth, who devoted most of his life to his second homeland – Croatia.

One of the greatest projects in this field was the creation of the Croatian Encyclopaedia, initiated in 1938 in Zagreb by Mate Ujevic (1901-1967), but unfortunately the war did not permit our scientists to complete this enormous job. Only five volumes of the highest typographical quality were issued (1941-1945), from A to Elektrika, out of 12 planned volumes. The Encyclopaedia was written according to highest scientific standards, and contains no traces of anti-Semitism, though the ustasha regime in Croatia, being…

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After 1945 Zagreb was again the center of encyclopaedic activity, as a continuation of a very long tradition, with many publications and books being issued during the past 40 years. Here we should mention Miroslav Krleza (1893-1981), one of the most outstanding Croatian writers of the 20th century. The famous French writer Jean Paul Sartre admitted that Krleza has anticipated his idea of the “nausée”. During many years Krleza was the president of the Yugoslav Lexicographical Institute in Zagreb (today…

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Five centuries of the Croatian lexicographic work can endure any serious critical judgement, which ranks it to the highest achievements of European lexicography (Igor Gostl). This unusual situation is especially striking in view of the fact that the Croats represent a small European nation. The Croats organized all the expositions of the (ex)Yugoslav art in Paris: in Petit Palais (1919) by Ivan Mestrovic, in Palais de Chaillot (1950, L’art médiéval yougoslave) by Miroslav Krleza, in Grand Palais (1971, Huit millénaire…

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The most exhaustive monographs dealing with the history of Croats in Bosnia – Herzegovina are those prepared by the cultural society Napredak, Sarajevo, and three monographs written by Dominik Mandic, see here.

Pavao Tijan (1908-1997) was a Croatian encyclopaedist born in the city of Senj, close collaborator of Mate Ujevic on the project of Croatian Encyclopaedia (1938-1945). In 1945 he emigrated to Italy, where he published his book Martyrium Croatiae, Rome, 1946. In Spain he was a university professor in Madrid, and known as don Pablo Tijan Roncevic. He is a holder of the prestigious medal of the Spanish King – Cruz de Alfonso X el Sabio (Encomienda con Place de Alfonso…

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Premio Brajnovic a la communication is a prestigious Spanish award (500,000 pesets) established in 1997 upon the initiative of newspapermen and lecturers from the University of Pamplona as a recognition to Luka Brajnovic (born in 1919 in Kotor, in Boka kotorska in today’s Montenegro, died in 2001). He was a professor of Ethics at the University of Navarra, a former director of the Institute of Artes Liberales, a well known Spanish intellectual. It is interesting that the award was established…

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