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'''Ante Starčević''' (born |
'''Ante Starčević''' (born [[1823]] in [[Žitnik]]- died [[1896]] in [[Zagreb]]) was a [[Croatia]]n [[politician]] in the times of the [[Kingdom of Hungary]]. |
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==Life== |
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| ⚫ | Starčević co-founded the [[Croatian Party of Rights]] in the [[Croatian Parliament]] in [[1861]]. His and [[Eugen Kvaternik|Kvaternik]]'s "Party of Rights" was named after the [[Croats|Croatian]] national and ethnic rights that they vowed to protect, calling for greater Croatian autonomy and self-rule at a time when Croatia was divided into several [[crown land]]s within the [[Habsburg Monarchy]]. |
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Starčević was a deputy in the [[Croatian Parliament]] for over thirty years. His fervent [[patriotism]] would subsequently earn him the title of ''[[Father of the Nation]]''. |
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==Political career, philosphical thought and legacy== |
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The picture of Ante Starčević appears on the 1000 [[kuna (currency)|kuna]] banknote. At his deathbed, he requested that no monuments be raised to his honor, but this wish was eventually ignored in [[1998]] when a statue of him was put up in [[Zagreb]]. |
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| ⚫ | Starčević |
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| ⚫ | Starčević finished his [[gymnasium]] in [[1845]] in [[Zagreb]]. Afterwards he went to seminary in Senj and then went on to [[Pest (city)|Pest]] to doctor in philosophy. He decided not to become a priest and instead moved into the world of politics. He took a position in the [[Rijeka]] county government in [[1862]] and that same year was elected to the Croatian Parliament as Rijeka's representative. In parliament he was an advocate of Croatian independence from both [[Austria]] and [[Hungary]]. |
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As a deputy in the [[Croatian Parliament]] where he served for over thirty years he was known for his fervent [[patriotism]] which eventually earned him the title of the ''[[Father of the Nation]]''. The popular appreciation of his role is probably best illustrated by the fact that almost a century after his death his portrait was chosen to be displayed on the 1000 [[kuna (currency)|kuna]] banknote. Although he had requested that no monuments be raised to his honour, this wish was eventually ignored when in [[1998]] a statue of him was erected in [[Zagreb]]. |
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Besides being a politician, he tried to be remembered as a historian, a linguist, a literary critic, a philosopher, a poet, and a writer of drama and political satire. All his achievements - in all the fields mentioned above - remained at an amateur level. His attempt to get an academic post with Zagreb University - based on a doctor of philosophy title granted to him upon finishing a three year (1845-8) study of theology in Pest - failed, too. Also, Strossmayer, the founder of the Yugoslav Academy of Science and Arts, kept him away from this institution. |
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It was in the early [[1860s]] that Starčević and his friend and fellow parliamentarian Eugen Kvaternik formed the Croatian Party of Rights. |
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Nevertheless, Starčević's role in shaping modern Croatian [[society]] and [[culture]] is nearly incalculable. His influence can be divided along the following lines: as a [[philologist]] and [[historian]] of [[literature]], Starčević is a figure of minor importance. He didn't devote much energy to the field probably because he realized that he was neither a qualified [[scholar]] nor did he possess a temperament for painstaking analysis needed for such a career. |
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==Historical findings about his political ideology== |
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However, Starčević was the first polemicist who broke the silence about the [[Greater Serbia|Greater Serbian]] ideology spread under the guise of linguistic research of [[Vuk Karadžić]]. In this he sharply contrasted with Croatian Illyrians such as [[Ljudevit Gaj]] or [[Bogoslav Šulek]] who preferred to stress Karadžić’s talent for ethnography and philology dismissing the latter’s views questioning the ethnicity of [[Croats]] as nothing more than ramblings of an old man. Furthermore, as of [[1851]] Starčević repeatedly engaged in the debate with Serbian literary figures and proponents of Karadžić's political ideas. Although his stance alienated [[Ljudevit Gaj]] and other veteran Illyrians, modern Croatian national ideology began to take shape. |
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As per findings made by the Croatian historians M. Gross and I. Goldstein, Starčević was a racist and an anti-semite. According to them, his understanding of the basic human rights and linking them to the civil liberties were extremely primitive and selective. For example, Starčević criticized the socialism as "''unshaped''" and he was delighted by the colonialism and claimed that "''[[Algeria]] should be densely populated by a few million of happy [[France|Frenchmen]] and not to allow to have one hundred fifty thousand of them against two and half million of [[Arab]]s''". |
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Together with [[Eugen Kvaternik]] Starčević called for a full Croatian national independence. Due to ideological differences he was opposed by the "Yugoslav" or “South Slavic”-oriented Illyrians gathered around bishop Strossmayer and historian Franjo Rački who envisaged [[Croatia|Croatia’s]] future in some South Slav community which should initially be based on ever closer cultural, but later also political and economic union. |
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Starčević had based his ideological views on writings of those [[Ancient Greece|ancient Greek]] writers who thought that some people, by their very nature, are slaves, for they had "''just half of the human mind''" and, for that reason, they "''shall be governed by people of the human nature''". About the people and nations which he saw as cursed and lower ranked races - he spoke as of the animal breeds and uses the "breed" word to mark them. |
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Besides, Starčević was a [[Turkophile]] radically opposed to Hungarian and German dominance as well as to the [[Habsburg monarchy]] in general. Also being fiercely opposed to [[Russia]] as a bastion of oppression in [[Europe]], he was suspicious of [[Serbia]] regarding it as a backward Russian client-state. Of course, in [[19th century]] [[Europe]] he was hardly alone as his views were shared by many other European anti-traditionalist radicals, especially in [[England]], where [[Russophobia]] and [[Turkophilia]] had fared well in Victorian circles ([[Richard Francis Burton]] may be considered an example). |
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He wrote a whole tractate about the [[Jew]]s that could be summarized in a few sencences: "''Jews ... are the breed, except a few, without any morality and without any homeland, the breed of which every unit strives to its personal gain, or to its relatives' gain. To let the Jews to participate in public life is dangerous: throw a piece of mud in a glass of the clearest water - then all the water will be puddled. That way the Jews spoiled and poisoned the French people too much''". |
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But, for Starčević, there was a race worst than the Jews. For him, the "''[[Serbs|Slavoserb]]''" notion was firstly of a political nature: the "''Slavoserbs''" are his political opponents who "''sold themselves to a foreign rule''". Then all those who favorably look on the South Slavs unity not regarding them (the South Slavs) as the [[Croats]]. |
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Later, and with years, Starčević more and more marked the "''Slavoserbs''" as a separate etnic group, or - as he used to say the "''breed''", ranked, as humans, lower than the Jews: ''"The Jews are less harmful than the Slavoserbs. For the Jews care for themselves and their people ... but the Slavoserbs are always for the evil: if they cannot gain a benefit, then they tend to harm the good or just affair, or to harm those who are for the affair.''" - he wrote once. |
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The opposing current of Croatian movement led by Strossmayer and Rački was rather conciliatory towards the [[Habsburg Empire]], frequently emphasizing Ottoman atrocities perpetrated against [[Christians]] in South-Eastern Europe. They also keenly promoted a vague pan-Slavic and South Slavic ideology combined with [[Russophilia]]. However, in more practical terms their efforts concentrated on building and expanding Croatian institutions of higher learning and savant societies. |
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Further, he claimed that the injustice was done to different "''cursed breeds''" what spoiled those breeds even more and made them "''to be vengeful against their opressors''". As a convinced racist, he stresses that to the "''cursed breeds''", i.e. to the lower races should not be given any role in the public life. |
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Starčević was more important as a shaper of Croatian secular national consciousness and as an ingenious, often scathing polemical [[writer]] than as a practical [[politician]]. He was popular with the middle-class urban [[intelligentsia]] and literary circles. Virtually no modern Croatian [[writer]] until [[1930s]] escaped his influence, on the left and the right end of ideological spectrum alike, the most prominent being [[Antun Gustav Matoš]], Eugen Kumičić, [[August Cesarec]] and [[Miroslav Krleža]]. Even post-modernist writers such as [[Tomislav Ladan]] were briefly under a strong Starčević's influence; the latter edited his selected works in [[1971]]. |
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As an aged man, he makes the Serbs identical to the "''Slavoserb breed''" and mocks them for their defeats they suffered long ago - which provoked negative reactions even in his "''Party of Rights''". On that ocassion, the Party member [[Erazmo Barčić]] ([[1894]].) described Starčević's mockery and racism as "''throwing mud at people and primitive cheeky invectives''". |
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==Starcevic's racism and its followers== |
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Strossmayer, Rački and their successors, however, succeeded in laying lasting foundations of the most important Croatian national institutions – something that tempestuous Starčević and his immediate followers failed to achieve. Later, in the beginning of the [[20th century]], Starčević's party split in two. Ironically, both successor parties deviated from the founding father's ideology – one eventually embraced Strossmayer's followers, while the other disappeared with the doomed [[Habsburg Empire]]. |
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Starcevic's racism was further fully elaborated by Ivo Pilar [pseudonym L. V. Sudland], in his work Die Sudslawische Frage und der Weltkrieg, which was published in 1918. The topicality of this racist work is seen from the fact that it was reprinted in 1990. In the preface to this edition, Dr. Vladimir Veselica, president of the Croatian Democratic Party, expresses his enthusiasm that the author had given "relevant answers" at the highest intellectual level. What thrilled him so was the consistently expressed racist hatred against the Serbs. It is sufficient to submit one quotation that explains the sense and content of this book, which far outdoes the current demonization of the Serbs: " it was not without reason that I tried to show how the Serbs today are dangerous for their ideas and their racial composition, how a bent for conspiracies, revolutions and coups is in their blood. " |
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Starčević had formulated his national ideology in the [[1850s]] and [[1860s]]. Although he later modified certain elements, the core of his philosophy remained intact. After a brief participation in the Illyrian movement - which itself was on the definite eclipse in Starčević's time - he adopted and modified pan-Croatism of the [[18th century]] Croatian polymath [[Pavao Ritter Vitezović]]. Starčević remained until his death, faithful to the ideological matrix he and the cofounder of Croatian Party of Rights, [[Eugen Kvaternik]], had helped to create. In the initial phase, both writers considered all South Slavic peoples, from [[Slovenes]] to [[Bulgarians]], to be [[Croats]]. They also initially emphasized that only [[Croats]], among peoples who spoke dialects belonging to the South Slavic dialectal continuum, had throughout centuries succeeded in retaining their national institutions - in Croatian case Starčević often cited [[Croatian Parliament]] or Hrvatski sabor as example. Even though both claims can be (ab)used to the point of absurdity, their historical roots are obvious. The first claim was in fact the Croatian version of the old pan-Slavic ideology rooted in the well-know [[16th century]] sermon delivered by Croatian noble from the island of [[Hvar]] Vinko Pribojević whose [[pan-Slavism]] influenced the founder of pan-Slavism proper [[Juraj Križanić]], a monk and historian from [[Dubrovnik]] Mavro Orbini, writer, historian and lexicographer [[Pavao Ritter Vitezović]], writer [[Andrija Kačić Miošić]] and the Croatian Illyrian movement. They all considered all South Slavic people to be one nation. In the case of Ritter and Starčević, Illyrian or Slovin appellations were substituted by the term Croatian, thus vastly expanding boundaries of imaginary Croatdom. This approach, although stemming from the weakness of Croatian position rather than its strength, resembled, in some traits, the pan-Germanic ideology that appropriated the identity and heritage of Germanic languages speaking peoples – [[Danes]], [[English people|English]], [[Scots]], [[Swedes]] etc. as "[[Germans]]". The second claim emerged during Croatian legal and political struggles with [[Austria]] and [[Hungary]] imprinting itself indelibly on the Croatian national elite which subsequently sought to emphasize the value and importance of historicity of Croatian existence. |
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The Croatian racism on which Starcevic's Party of Rights was founded had its worthy heirs. The British historian A.P.J. Taylor wrote that when in the Party of Rights there appeared men who |
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According to this view, all South Slavic peoples, except [[Croats]], had their moments of glory and expansion, but, eventually, all traces of their statehood had been completely obliterated, either through Ottoman invasion or Habsburg subjugation. The [[19th century]] rebirth of statehood in [[Serbia]] and [[Bulgaria]] was acknowledged, though with doubts regarding its validity and future. Starčević and Kvaternik were especially uncertain about the new Serbian national state. In their opinion, it lacked all historical roots other than autocephalous [[Orthodox Church]] and thus was bound to serve merely as an outpost of Russian tsarist despotism. Furthermore, the recalcitrance of Serbian national feeling left Starčević often perplexed. In the later phase he reluctantly accepted Serbian nationhood, but only in [[Serbia]] proper. Also, historical developments forced Starčević to modify his ideology to a certain extent. It became obvious that, although South Slavic peoples did share many linguistic and cultural traits, they could not be subsumed under any cover national name, be it Illyrian or Slovin, let alone Croatian. Besides, though the conscience of historical continuity through legal institutions may give national elite a sense of mission, contemporary political, military and economical realities tend to dethrone any notion of "historicity" and "ahistoricity" of peoples. |
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refused to have the conflict with the Serbs the alpha and omega of their political activities, the party majority formed the Pure Party of Rights "pure from any trace of realism," notes Taylor. |
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As usually happens, the most fanatic exponents of this harsh patriotism were converts. |
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In practice, Starčević was engaged in a bitter struggle for affirmation of Croatian identity against the representatives of Hungarian and Austrian German ruling classes who sought to reduce the scope of authority of [[Croatian Parliament]]. At the same time, he was also pitted against proponents of Serbian national ideology who posed claims on [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]] and parts of [[Croatia]] as supposed Serbian historic lands. Given how tense the situation was, it is no coincidence that virtually all late [[19th century]] Serbian historians had been followers of the ideology of pan-Serbism whereas major Croatian historians of the era were politically affiliated with the [[Croatian Party of Rights]] and Ante Starčević's pan-Croatism. |
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Although forced to accept the existence of the contemporary Serbian state, Starčević refused to acknowledge Serbian national affiliation of Orthodox inhabitants of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina who were native speakers of South Slavic dialects-essentially the [[Shtokavian dialect]]. Since his approach was closer to the French model of "civic nationalism" than to the German notion of "ethnic nationalism" (although he sometimes mixed, confusingly, both ideological matrices), Starčević's opinion was logical from his standpoint. Ethnic origin being of marginal importance, the national affiliation of the Eastern Orthodox inhabitants could be, from this point of view, only Croat since |
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they resided in Croatian historical lands-as has been the contention of Croatian historians, Starčević's ideological followers. It is no coincidence that first modern history of medieval Bosnia was written by pre-eminent historian [[Vjekoslav Klaić]], a Croatian Party of Rights member. [[Bosniaks]] or Bosnian Muslims have been even more: according to Starčević, they were both "ethnic" and "civic" Croats, in his view descended mainly from the Ottoman era Islamic converts who had been of Croatian ethnic origin. |
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During ideological battles within Croatian Parliament, as well as in the press, Starčević conjoined the Latin terms Sclavus (slave) and Servus (serf), thus forming a neologism which in its Croatian version, «Slavosrb», was frequently used in his polemical writings to ridicule and denounce a slavish mentality he thought was a marked characteristic of his political opponents. The incarnation of the "Slavosrb" mentality was, in Starčević's eyes, his chief political adversary bishop Strossmayer. Also, Starčević had generalized the meaning of this neologism in denouncing entire nations he thought were prey to the slavish mentality, at least during some historical periods: he especially denounced Austrian Germans, Hungarians and Serbs. The first two peoples were seen as Croatia's main oppressors in the Hapsburg monarchy; the Serbs in Croatia, whom he, paradoxically, did not recognize as a separate nation, as the central instrument in keeping Croatia subjugated during the reign (1883.-1903.) of Khuen Hedervary, the Croatia's Ban who was in effect a Hungarian governor of Croatia. |
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==Bibliography== |
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* Djela Ante Starčevića, I-III, Zagreb 1893.-94. |
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* Izabrani spisi, priredio Blaž Jurišić, Zagreb, 1943. |
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* Politički spisi, priredio [[Tomislav Ladan]], Zagreb, 1971. |
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* Misli i pogledi, sastavio Blaž Jurišić, Zagreb, 1971. |
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* Književna djela, priredio Dubravko Jelčić, Zagreb, 1995. |
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* Govori, Zagreb, 1996. |
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==References== |
==References== |
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* |
*Mirjana Gross, Izvorno pravaštvo – ideologija, agitacija, pokret, Golden marketing, Zagreb, 2000. |
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* Liberalna misao u Hrvatskoj |
*Barišić, Pavo, Ante Starčević (1823-1896) // Liberalna misao u Hrvatskoj / Feldman, Andrea ; *Stipetić, Vladimir ; Zenko, Franjo (ur.).Zagreb : Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung, 2000. |
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*Neke uspomene [Some Reminiscences], Djela dr. Ante Starcevica [The Works of Dr. Ante Starcevic] [Zagreb, 1894] |
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* Hrvatski leksikon, II. svezak (L-Ž), str.469.-470., Naklada Leksikon, Zagreb, 1997. |
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*Na cemu smo [Where We Stand], Djela dr. Ante Starcevica [The Works of Dr. Ante Starcevic][Zagreb, 1894] |
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*The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809-1918 : A History of the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary (Paperback) by A. J. P. Taylor, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1976 |
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==External Links== |
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*[http://www.pavelicpapers.com/features/essays/firingline.html Starcevic's racism] |
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*[http://www.moljac.hr/biografije/starcevic.htm Ante Starčević] |
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[[Category:1896 deaths|Starcevic, Ante]] |
[[Category:1896 deaths|Starcevic, Ante]] |
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[[Category:Croatian politicians|Starcevic, Ante]] |
[[Category:Croatian politicians|Starcevic, Ante]] |
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[[Category:Anti-Semitic people|Starcevic, Ante]] |
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[[hr:Ante Starčević]] |
[[hr:Ante Starčević]] |
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[[sr:Анте Старчевић]] |
[[sr:Анте Старчевић]] |
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Revision as of 18:35, 25 April 2006
Ante Starčević (born 1823 in Žitnik- died 1896 in Zagreb) was a Croatian politician in the times of the Kingdom of Hungary.
Life
Starčević co-founded the Croatian Party of Rights in the Croatian Parliament in 1861. His and Kvaternik's "Party of Rights" was named after the Croatian national and ethnic rights that they vowed to protect, calling for greater Croatian autonomy and self-rule at a time when Croatia was divided into several crown lands within the Habsburg Monarchy.
Starčević was a deputy in the Croatian Parliament for over thirty years. His fervent patriotism would subsequently earn him the title of Father of the Nation.
The picture of Ante Starčević appears on the 1000 kuna banknote. At his deathbed, he requested that no monuments be raised to his honor, but this wish was eventually ignored in 1998 when a statue of him was put up in Zagreb.
Starčević finished his gymnasium in 1845 in Zagreb. Afterwards he went to seminary in Senj and then went on to Pest to doctor in philosophy. He decided not to become a priest and instead moved into the world of politics. He took a position in the Rijeka county government in 1862 and that same year was elected to the Croatian Parliament as Rijeka's representative. In parliament he was an advocate of Croatian independence from both Austria and Hungary.
Besides being a politician, he tried to be remembered as a historian, a linguist, a literary critic, a philosopher, a poet, and a writer of drama and political satire. All his achievements - in all the fields mentioned above - remained at an amateur level. His attempt to get an academic post with Zagreb University - based on a doctor of philosophy title granted to him upon finishing a three year (1845-8) study of theology in Pest - failed, too. Also, Strossmayer, the founder of the Yugoslav Academy of Science and Arts, kept him away from this institution.
It was in the early 1860s that Starčević and his friend and fellow parliamentarian Eugen Kvaternik formed the Croatian Party of Rights.
Historical findings about his political ideology
As per findings made by the Croatian historians M. Gross and I. Goldstein, Starčević was a racist and an anti-semite. According to them, his understanding of the basic human rights and linking them to the civil liberties were extremely primitive and selective. For example, Starčević criticized the socialism as "unshaped" and he was delighted by the colonialism and claimed that "Algeria should be densely populated by a few million of happy Frenchmen and not to allow to have one hundred fifty thousand of them against two and half million of Arabs".
Starčević had based his ideological views on writings of those ancient Greek writers who thought that some people, by their very nature, are slaves, for they had "just half of the human mind" and, for that reason, they "shall be governed by people of the human nature". About the people and nations which he saw as cursed and lower ranked races - he spoke as of the animal breeds and uses the "breed" word to mark them.
He wrote a whole tractate about the Jews that could be summarized in a few sencences: "Jews ... are the breed, except a few, without any morality and without any homeland, the breed of which every unit strives to its personal gain, or to its relatives' gain. To let the Jews to participate in public life is dangerous: throw a piece of mud in a glass of the clearest water - then all the water will be puddled. That way the Jews spoiled and poisoned the French people too much".
But, for Starčević, there was a race worst than the Jews. For him, the "Slavoserb" notion was firstly of a political nature: the "Slavoserbs" are his political opponents who "sold themselves to a foreign rule". Then all those who favorably look on the South Slavs unity not regarding them (the South Slavs) as the Croats.
Later, and with years, Starčević more and more marked the "Slavoserbs" as a separate etnic group, or - as he used to say the "breed", ranked, as humans, lower than the Jews: "The Jews are less harmful than the Slavoserbs. For the Jews care for themselves and their people ... but the Slavoserbs are always for the evil: if they cannot gain a benefit, then they tend to harm the good or just affair, or to harm those who are for the affair." - he wrote once.
Further, he claimed that the injustice was done to different "cursed breeds" what spoiled those breeds even more and made them "to be vengeful against their opressors". As a convinced racist, he stresses that to the "cursed breeds", i.e. to the lower races should not be given any role in the public life.
As an aged man, he makes the Serbs identical to the "Slavoserb breed" and mocks them for their defeats they suffered long ago - which provoked negative reactions even in his "Party of Rights". On that ocassion, the Party member Erazmo Barčić (1894.) described Starčević's mockery and racism as "throwing mud at people and primitive cheeky invectives".
Starcevic's racism and its followers
Starcevic's racism was further fully elaborated by Ivo Pilar [pseudonym L. V. Sudland], in his work Die Sudslawische Frage und der Weltkrieg, which was published in 1918. The topicality of this racist work is seen from the fact that it was reprinted in 1990. In the preface to this edition, Dr. Vladimir Veselica, president of the Croatian Democratic Party, expresses his enthusiasm that the author had given "relevant answers" at the highest intellectual level. What thrilled him so was the consistently expressed racist hatred against the Serbs. It is sufficient to submit one quotation that explains the sense and content of this book, which far outdoes the current demonization of the Serbs: " it was not without reason that I tried to show how the Serbs today are dangerous for their ideas and their racial composition, how a bent for conspiracies, revolutions and coups is in their blood. "
The Croatian racism on which Starcevic's Party of Rights was founded had its worthy heirs. The British historian A.P.J. Taylor wrote that when in the Party of Rights there appeared men who refused to have the conflict with the Serbs the alpha and omega of their political activities, the party majority formed the Pure Party of Rights "pure from any trace of realism," notes Taylor. As usually happens, the most fanatic exponents of this harsh patriotism were converts.
References
- Mirjana Gross, Izvorno pravaštvo – ideologija, agitacija, pokret, Golden marketing, Zagreb, 2000.
- Barišić, Pavo, Ante Starčević (1823-1896) // Liberalna misao u Hrvatskoj / Feldman, Andrea ; *Stipetić, Vladimir ; Zenko, Franjo (ur.).Zagreb : Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung, 2000.
- Neke uspomene [Some Reminiscences], Djela dr. Ante Starcevica [The Works of Dr. Ante Starcevic] [Zagreb, 1894]
- Na cemu smo [Where We Stand], Djela dr. Ante Starcevica [The Works of Dr. Ante Starcevic][Zagreb, 1894]
- The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809-1918 : A History of the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary (Paperback) by A. J. P. Taylor, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1976