Izvorni znanstveni članak
https://doi.org/10.52064/vamz.59.2.4
Aryan race theory in Croatia from the late Habsburg period to the NDH – the scholarly contribution of Ćiro Truhelka
Nevenko Bartulin
*
* Dopisni autor.
Sažetak
This article examines the race theory of the noted Croatian archaeologistĆiro Truhelka (1865–1942), who served as first curatorof the Provincial Museum in Habsburg Sarajevo. During theperiod of Austro-Hungarian rule, Bosnia and Herzegovina becamethe centre of the struggle of rival nationalisms – Serbian,Croatian and Yugoslav – eager to assert their dominance overthe land, identity and history of the core South Slavic peoples.Truhelka’s role in these political-ideological tensions was to introducerace theory (in an influential booklet published anonymouslyin 1907) as a means to explain the ethno-religious antagonismin Bosnia. According to Truhelka, the Catholics and Muslimsof Bosnia and Herzegovina were both ethnically Croatianand racially Aryan-Slavic, characterized by the predominanceof ‘Nordic-Dinaric’ racial traits in contrast to the OrthodoxSerbs, who were mainly distinguished by the non-Aryan racialfeatures they were said to have inherited from the nomadic and‘degenerate’ Balkan Vlachs. As an ‘Oriental’ reservoir of rich ethnographicmaterial, Bosnia and Herzegovina became an objectof particular interest to late nineteenth- and early twentiethcenturyracial anthropologists. Truhelka was therefore ideallyplaced to make an intellectual contribution to the wider Aryanrace theory. He continued to write on the subject of race afterthe fall of the Habsburg Monarchy, maintaining his position onthe Aryan-Slavic/Croat racial origins of the Bosnian Muslims,as well as linking Croatia’s racial history to the earliest settlementof Nordic Aryans and the Dinaric race in the Balkans. Althoughthe earliest origins of the Dinaric race were consideredto be non-Aryan, the admixture of the Nordic race with a Dinaricpopulation had purportedly led to the emergence of a ‘blond Dinaric’racial type in the western Balkans. Truhelka’s race theorywas to have a marked influence on Ustaša racial ideology.
Ključne riječi
Race, anthropology, Aryan, Nordic, Dinaric, Slavs, Croats, Serbs, Bosnia
Hrčak ID:
352008
URI
Datum izdavanja:
23.10.2026.
Posjeta: 0 *