Vane Ivanović

Vane Ivanović
British Consul General of Monaco
Personal details
Born	June 9, 1913 Osijek, Austria-Hungary
Died	April 4, 1999
Alma mater	Westminster School Peterhouse, Cambridge

Ivan "Vane" Stefan Ivanović (June 9, 1913 - April 4, 1999) was a Yugoslav-British athlete, shipowner, political activist, diplomat, writer and philanthropist. One of the founders of the European Movement and the Consul General of Monaco in London, he devoted most of his life to the idea of Yugoslav unity.

Background

Vane (pronounced "Vahnay") Ivanović (pronounced "Ivanovich") was born in 1913 in Osijek, Austria-Hungary to a Jewish Croat father and a Serb mother. His father, Ivan Rikard Ivanović, was a representative in Croatia's Sabor (Assembly). His mother, Milica (b. February 26, 1888) was a sister of Dušan Popović, a leading Serb politician in the ruling Croat-Serb Coalition. Svetozar Pribićević, the other leading Serb in the Coalition, was the best man at Rikard and Milica's wedding in July 1912, while Ivan Lorković, member of Ivan Rikard Ivanović's party and the leading Croat in the Coalition, was Ivanović's godfather. Ivanović had a younger brother, Vladimir, born 1917, and a younger sister, Daška Ivanović (pronounced "Dashka"), born in 1915.

Whereas his family background clearly contributed to the development of Ivanović's strong Yugoslav identity, his life in Britain and the education he received there (Westminster School and Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he read Economics) made him a staunch Anglophile. A rather dandyish figure who supported an impressive cigar, Ivanović appeared to Serbs and Croats an English gentleman who spoke a slightly archaic Serbo-Croat; to the British he was considered a no less exotic 'Eastern gentleman'. Despite spending much time in Britain, he never sought to be naturalised, although he did not hold a Yugoslav passport either. He was also the proud owner of two Dalmatian dogs that is until 1930, when Ivanović himself, a member of the British Dalmatian Club, took a pair to Dalmatia as a present for his stepfather who had expressed a wish to introduce them there).

Sports

A well-known athlete, Ivanović was a member of the Yugoslav team at the 1936 Summer Olympics held in Berlin, running the 110-metre and 400-metre hurdles. At the event, he was among the number of athletes who refused to give Hitler the Nazi salute. He was the undisputed Yugoslav champion in both disciplines throughout the 1930s. In 110m he reached the semi-finals in Berlin and in 400m hurdles he held the Yugoslav record for 17 years, from 1936 until 1953.

He maintained his love of the sport throughout his life. His only concession to age was to cut back, in his 80‘s, his runs around Hyde Park to alternate days. Ivanović was also an avid scuba diver. One of the pioneers of the sport, he contributed greatly to its development in Europe and the Bahamas. He wrote a number of books on spearfishing, of which one in particular, "Modern Spearfishing" (1974), remains a classic.

Career in shipping

After his parents' divorce in the early 1920s, Ivanović's mother re-married Božidar "Božo" Banac (pronounced "Banatz") in London on 9 November 1921. Banac lived in London where he ran a shipping business, Yugoslavenski Lloyd, Ltd., (Yugoslav Lloyd), then Yugoslavia's largest shipping company which operated vessels on Atlantic, Adriatic and Mediterranean waters. Ivanović and his siblings moved in with their new stepfather. Banac, a native of Dubrovnik and a believer in Yugoslav unity, had helped the creation and activities of the Yugoslav Committee, a group of Habsburg Croat, Slovene and Serb politicians and intellectuals also based in London.

By 1937 Ivanović was made a director in his stepfather's company.

World War II

In 1914, Banac had placed his ships at the disposal of the British war effort. The family did the same at the outbreak of World War II, when Ivanović, acting on behalf of his then ailing stepfather, placed 10 out of the 22 steamers owned by Yugoslav Lloyd in the service of the Ministry of War Transport. Thus, Banac and Ivanović were the first shipowners from a neutral country to join the Allies.

After the invasion of Yugoslavia by Germany, Italy, and their external and internal allies in April 1941, Ivanović organized other Yugoslav shipowners into the "Yugoslav Shipping Committee". Its aim was to prevent the capture of the Yugoslav mercantile fleet, still in neutral waters, by the Nazis.

In the summer of 1943, Ivanović joined the Yugoslav section of the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) the propaganda arm of Britain's Special Operations Executive, as most of his fleet, part of the Yugoslav Lloyd, had either been sunk or captured, however, there were still enough Yugoslavian, independently-owned ships plying the seven seas and participating in the Allied effort (under flags of convenience).

In his memoirs, Ivanović explains why he did not return to his occupied country to join Josip Broz Tito's or Draža Mihailović's resistance movements: "I had no desire to forget the enemy and engage in a fratricidal war among my fellow countrymen, especially as I did not wholly agree with either side." He spent the rest of the war between London, Bari and Cairo and was demobilized as a Major in the British army. Because of the Communist seizure of power in Yugoslavia, he remained in Britain as a political refugee. In April 1945, Bozidar "Bozo" Banac, Ivanović's stepfather died.

Post-War Years

After the war, Ivanović resumed a successful career in shipping, despite the fact that most of his pre-war fleet had been either destroyed or nationalized by the new Yugoslav authorities.

In February 1949 Ivanović's father died in Genoa-Quinto, Italy. That same year his sister was re-married to Lt. Col. Neil McLean, DSO, who had been a member of Special Operations Executive during the war. That same year he founded the "Benevolent Association of Free Citizens of Yugoslavia", a charity financed mainly by himself. Through that and as a private individual he helped innumerable refugees, students and political dissidents.

He and other like-minded Yugoslavs organized discussions abroad, which led to the two-volume collection "A Democratic Alternative", published in 1963 and 1982, which warned that the establishment of independent states in the Balkans would spawn 'fatal conflicts'. He continued to help his fellow countrymen until his death, sponsoring a number of postgraduate students who fled the 1990s conflict in Yugoslavia, and was also one of the founders of Jean Monnet's European Movement, heading the Yugoslav Committee for more than three decades.

In 1967, Ivanović was appointed by the late Prince Rainier III to the post of Consul General of Monaco in London. Three years later, his mother, Milica, died in Monaco. In 1977, he published his auto-biography entitled: LX, Memoirs of a Yugoslav.

In 1982, the final memorandum of the "Democratic Alternative" argued that Yugoslavia could only survive as a democratic community of sovereign nations, and that any other scenario would almost inevitably lead to a civil war. Ivanović lived long enough to witness the awful fulfillment of this prophecy with the outbreak of the Yugoslav wars. He died in London on 4 April, 1999. His father liked to point out that Ivanović was the first Yugoslav in the family. Born on the eve of unification, he died as its last remnants collapsed.

In 1939 Ivanović married June Fisher with whom he had two sons, Ivan Božidar and Andrija; and one daughter, Minja. His son Ivan Božidar succeeded him as director of Ivanovic & Co. and as Consul of Monaco upon his death.

Bibliography

• Submarine Spearfishing by Vane Ivanović (Kaye-Ward, London, 1951)
• Meštrović Genij by Vane Ivanović (Essay, Notre-Dame Archives, Indiana 1962)
• Modern Spearfishing by Vane Ivanović (Kaye-Ward, London, 1974)
• LX, Memoirs of a Yugoslav by Vane Ivanović (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, London, 1977)
• Yugoslav Democracy on Hold by Vane Ivanović (Dodir, London, 1996)

External links

• The Independent Obituary
• Kingston University/Vane Ivanović Project
• Kingston University/Vane Ivanović Lecture
• Library
• Marina Vane
• Marina Vane/Achilles Club
• Classic Dive Books
• SR Olympic Sports