Milan Marjanović

Milan Marjanović
Born	(1879-05-12)12 May 1879 Kastav, Austrian Littoral, Austria-Hungary (now Croatia)
Died	21 December 1955(1955-12-21) (aged 76) Zagreb, PR Croatia, Yugoslavia (now Croatia)
Occupation(s)	Writer, filmmaker

Milan Marjanović (12 May 1879 – 21 December 1955) was a Croatian and Yugoslavian writer, literary critic and filmmaker. He joined the Croat-Serb Progressive Youth, the youth wing of the Croat-Serb Coalition, and became one of its leading members by 1903. By 1912, he broke with the organisation and joined the Yugoslav Nationalist Youth, viewing the integral Yugoslavism as the only way to politically unite the South Slavs. After the outbreak of the World War I, he fled to Paris where he joined the Yugoslav Committee. He worked at the mission of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later renamed Yugoslavia) at the Paris Peace Conference. In the Interwar Period, Marjanović travelled to the United States, organising exhibitions of works of sculptor Ivan Meštrović and attending a course in photography and film directing in New York. He returned to Zagreb and then moved to Belgrade until retirement. During the World War II, he was arrested and imprisoned by the Fascist Italy in 1942–1943. In 1944, he joined the Yugoslav Partisans' mission in Bari. He became a full member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Marjanović influenced the ideology of Yugoslav nationalism and the Yugoslav Nationalist Youth. He introduced the idea of an unified Serbo-Croatian nation. Marjanović claimed that the Ottoman conquests in Europe both destroyed medieval South Slavic kingdoms and stopped ethnogenesis of separate South Slavic nations. The same ideology was subsequently adopted by pro-regime Organization of Yugoslav Nationalists founded shortly after establishment of Yugoslavia.

By 1914, Marjanović published more than four hundred literary reviews. A significant portion of Marjanović's work dealt with the works of Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević, Ante Kovačić, and Vladimir Nazor. Marjanović published a literary review deemed the first history of literary realism in the Croatian literature. Marjanović also wrote plays, a novel and a series of political and literary-culture articles. Marjanović also published a series of works on occult topics and on history, including the Adriatic question. Marjanović wrote screenplays and directed documentary films and an early Croatian animated film.

Biography

Yugoslav Committee photographed in Paris in 1916

Milan Marjanović, born in Kastav, attended high school in Karlovac from 1894 until he was expelled for taking part in an anti-Hungarian protest in Karlovac in 1896. He continued his education in Sušak and at the Classical Gymnasium in Zagreb. In 1898–1899, he studied at the Trade Academy in Prague. Marjanović joined the Croat-Serb Progressive Youth, the youth wing of the Croat-Serb Coalition, and became one of its leading members by 1903. That year, he joined the Party of Rights until 1904 when he took part in founding of the Croatian People's Progressive Party as the party secretary. During the Croatian National Movement of 1903, Marjanović printed and distributed the so-called Basel Manifestos urging the population of Croatia-Slavonia to resist magyarisation policies of the Ban of Croatia Károly Khuen-Héderváry. Marjanović spoke at the Zagreb Assembly held in protest against Khuen-Héderváry on 11 March 1903, calling on those present to use peaceful means until they are exhausted and then force if necessary.

Marjanović edited a number of magazines and newspapers. In 1904, upon urging of Frano Supilo, Marjanović left the editorial position at the Crvena Hrvatska for that of an editor of the Novi list. In 1908–1909, during the Agram Trial, he organised and ran information service for international press. In 1910, while he was the editor of Sloboda and Pučka sloboda published by Josip Smodlaka in Split, Marjanović adopted Yugoslavist views. He was accused of involvement in a 1912 attempted assassination of the Ban Slavko Cuvaj and forced into exile. He moved to Belgrade and wrote articles on the Balkan Wars for several foreign newspapers as their correspondent. In 1913, he was amnestied and he returned to Zagreb where he launched Narodno jedinstvo' political magazine. Following the 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Marjanović was confined to Kastav, and then imprisoned in Ljubljana and Zagreb, before being sent to Karlovac for drafting due to the onset of the World War I. In April 1915, he fled to Paris where he took part in founding of the Yugoslav Committee and served as the editor of the committee's Southern Slav Bulletin.

In late 1915, Marjanović moved to the United States to work with South Slavic diaspora in New York. He established the Yugoslav Committee's office in Cleveland and organised the Congress of American Yugoslavs in Pittsburgh in 1916, before moving to Chile and Peru to promote South Slavic unification. In 1919, he worked in the press committee of the Yugoslav Committee and at the mission of the newly established Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later renamed Yugoslavia) at the Paris Peace Conference.

In 1926, Marjanović travelled to the United States again, organising exhibitions of works of sculptor Ivan Meštrović and attending a course in photography and film directing at the New York Institute of Photography. The next year, he helped establish film production at the School of People's Health in Zagreb and led the school's photo and film lab until 1929. Then he moved to Belgrade and led the central national press bureau until retirement in 1934. During the World War II, he lived in Kastav, Rome, and Peruggia where he was arrested in 1942. He was imprisoned until the 1943 surrender of Italy and he joined the Yugoslav Partisans' mission in Bari in 1944, working there as a journalist. After the war, in 1945–1947, he worked at the Institute for Study of International Issues of the Yugoslav Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1951, Marjanović became a full member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Yugoslav nationalist ideology

Marjanović influenced the ideology of Yugoslav nationalism espoused by the former members of the radical wing of the Croat-Serb Progressive Youth dissatisfied with the pro-regime policies of the Croat-Serb Coalition. In 1912, inspired by Serbian military victories in the Balkan Wars, they established the Yugoslav Nationalist Youth (Jugoslavenska nacionalistička omladina, JNO) and denounced the parliamentary political struggle advocated by the coalition. As its ideology, the JNO adopted the integral Yugoslavism and the cult of heroism inspired by the works of Jovan Cvijić. He ascribed the virutes such as beauty, heroism, loyalty and democratic spirit to ethnic Serb population of the Dinaric Alps. Conversely, the non-democratic and non-national practices with those living in the Pannonian Basin, specifically in the central and eastern Croatia. Marjanović elaborated on Cvijić's ideas, claiming that Croatian Yugoslavism was feudal and coservative and therefore inferior to modern Serbian Yugoslavism. He arrived at that conclusion by comparing the Greater Serbian ideas of Vuk Karadžić and the Greater Croatian ideas of Ante Starčević—arguing that both were expressions of their awareness of South Slavic unity.

Marjanović introduced the idea of an unified Serbo-Croatian nation. In his collection of essays Narod koji nastaje: zašto nastaje i kako se formira jedinstveni srpsko-hrvatski narod (A Nation in Becoming: Why and How is a Unified Serbo-Croatian Nation Being Formed) published in 1913, Marjanović claimed that the Ottoman conquests in Europe both destroyed medieval South Slavic kingdoms and stopped formation of separate nations—creating an amalgamated South Slavic population. The variant of the integral Yugoslavist ideology based on Cvijić's and Marjanović's work was subsequently adopted by pro-regime Organization of Yugoslav Nationalists founded shortly after establishment of Yugoslavia.

Writing and filmmaking

Marjanović pursued literary criticism after 1894. By 1914, he published more than four hundred literary reviews. He followed ideas of Vissarion Belinsky, Hippolyte Taine, and Georg Brandes, examining literature through a utilitarian prism of social realism of Tomáš Masaryk. This led him to numerous debates with critic Branimir Livadić and writer Antun Gustav Matoš. A sizeable portion of Marjanović's writings dealt with the works of Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević, Ante Kovačić, and Vladimir Nazor. Marjanović was among the first to recognise the value of Kovačić's novel U registraturi and he thought of Nazor as one of the greatest Croatian authors. In 1906, Marjanović published Iza Šenoe, a literary review deemed the first history of literary realism in the Croatian literature. Marjanović also wrote plays, including one based on Kovačić's novel U registraturi, a novel and a series of political and literary-culture articles.

In 1920s, Marjanović published a series of works on occult topics: Četiri evangjelja religije relativnoga (lit. 'Four Gospels of the Religion of Relative'), Okultizam i esorerija (lit. 'Occultism and Esotericism'), and Načela i forme, dužnosti i odnosi, zadaci i metode slobodnog zidarstva uopće, a jugoslavenskog napose (lit. 'Principles and Forms, Duties and Relations, Tasks and Methods of Freemasonry in General and Yugoslav Freemasonry in Particular'). He was a freemason in 1909–1940 and the head of the Ivan grof Drašković lodge in 1935. Marjanović took interest in history. In 1930s, Marjanović wrote a review of history of South Slavs until the 14th century Nasleđe prošlosti (lit. 'Heritage of the Past'), and a biography of Stjepan Radić (the assassinated leader of the Croatian Peasant Party). He also examined the Adriatic question, publishing a brochure Protiv okupatora (lit. 'Against the Occupier'), and book Borba za Jadran 1914–1946 (lit. 'Struggle for the Adriatic 1914–1946') on the topic in the 1950s. In 1960, his writings on diplomacy from the World War I until 1924 were published under the title of Londonski ugovor (lit. 'Treaty of London') referring to the 1915 treaty between the World War I Allies and Italy. He signed some of his works using pseudonyms Anonimus, Branislav, Branislav Vinkov, Branko Vinković, Fidus, Historicus, Istranin, Jack, M. Branislav, M. Bršljanovački, Novus, Sincerus, Sperans, Verus, or Vinkov.

Marjanović was the screenwriter and direcor of approximately 20 documentary films produced by the School of People's Health from 1927 to 1932. They include films documenting sculpting of Meštrović's The Bowman and The Spearman, and unveiling of the same sculptor's Gregory of Nin. He is the author of one of the first Croatian animated films Martin u nebo, Martin iz neba produced in 1929.

Sources

• Bacalja, Robert; Ivon, Katarina (2017). "Hrvatsko-srpski odnosi na stranicama Crvene Hrvatske" [Croatian-Serbian Relations as Presented by the Newspaper Crvena Hrvatska]. Radovi Zavoda za povijesne znanosti HAZU u Zadru (in Croatian). 59 (59). Zagreb: Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts: 385–406. doi:10.21857/ygjwrcjo5y. ISSN 1330-0474.
• Đurašković, Stevo (2011). "Ideologija Organizacije jugoslovenskih nacionalista (Orjuna)" [The Ideology of the Organization of Yugoslav Nationalists (ORJUNA)]. Časopis za suvremenu povijest (in Croatian). 43 (1). Zagreb: Croatian Institute of History: 225–247. ISSN 0590-9597.
• Holjevac, Željko (2005). "Stjepan Radić i Milan Marjanović o narodnom pokretu 1903. godine" [Stjepan Radić and Milan Marjanović on the National Movement of 1903]. Časopis za suvremenu povijest (in Croatian). 37 (3). Zagreb: Croatian Institute of History: 713–719. ISSN 0590-9597.
• Kokolari, Martina (2021). "Marjanović, Milan". Croatian Biographical Lexicon (in Croatian). Miroslav Krleža Institute of Lexicography. Retrieved 20 January 2025.
• Mirošević, Franko (2005). "Godina 1903. u Hrvatskoj u hrvatskim udžbenicima" [Unrest in Croatia in 1903 in Croatian Textbooks]. Časopis za suvremenu povijest (in Croatian). 37 (3). Zagreb: Croatian Institute of History: 735–751. ISSN 0590-9597.
• Šepić, Dragovan (1960). "Jugoslavenski pokret i Milan Marjanović (1901–1919) (In memoriam Milanu Marjanoviću)" [Yugoslav Movement and Milan Marjanović (1901–1919) (In Memoriam of Milan Marjanović)]. Zbornik Odsjeka za povijesne znanosti Zavoda za povijesne i društvene znanosti Hrvatske akademije znanosti i umjetnosti (in Croatian). 3. Zagreb: Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts: 531–561. ISSN 1330-7134.
• Trencsényi, Balász; Janowski, Maciej; Baár, Mónika; Falina, Maria; Kopeček, Michal (2016). A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe: Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century'. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191056956.