Melko Čingrija

Melko Čingrija
Acting Governor of the National Bank of Serbia
In office 1934–1935
Preceded by	Ignjat J. Bajloni
Succeeded by	Milan Radosavljević
Mayor of Dubrovnik
In office 1911–1914
Preceded by	Pero Čingrija
Succeeded by	Ivo Celio-Cega
Mayor of Dubrovnik
In office 1918–1920
Preceded by	Ivo Celio-Cega
Succeeded by	Ottomar Nonveiller
Personal details
Born	April 1, 1873 Dubrovnik, Dalmatia, Austrian Empire (now Croatia)
Died	December 8, 1949 (age 76) Dubrovnik, Kingdom of Yugoslavia (now Croatia)
Nationality	Croatian
Occupation	politician

Melko Čingrija (April 1, 1873, Dubrovnik – December 8, 1949, Dubrovnik) was a Serb-Catholic writer and politician.

Life and career

Melko Čingrija was the son of the long-time Dubrovnik mayor, Pero Čingrija.

Until the outbreak of the First World War, he was at the forefront of the struggle for Croatian national and political rights, later through the policy of a new course.

At the beginning of the First World War, he was interned by the Austrian authorities. He signed the May Declaration of the Yugoslav Club in the Imperial Council (May 30, 1917) and the Geneva Declaration (November 9, 1918) on the creation of joint Yugoslav governments, of which he was a member.

In 1920, he turned to the Greater Serbia policy pursued by King Aleksandar Karađorđević and the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the Serbian radical Nikola Pašić. 1926, he formally became a member of Pasic's Serbian People's Radical Party. In addition, Čingrija was the vice-governor of the National Bank of Yugoslavia, and he signed the banknotes in Cyrillic.

In 1939, he published the books Dubrovnik and The Croatian Question, in which he advocated for the Serb-Catholic point of view, beauty in the territorial division and that it wasn't necessary to establish the Banovina of Croatia over Zeta Banovina.