Original scientific paper
The Life and Work of Ivo Pilar (1874-1933) - An Outline
Srećko LIPOVČAN
; Institut društvenih znanosti Ivo Pilar, Zagreb
Abstract
Ivo Pilar (Zagreb, 1874-1933) belongs to a larger group of distinguished
people of Croatia’s public life who worked near the end of the 19th and
during the first half of the 20th century, and yet no reliable biographies of
the same are available. According to the author, one of the underlying
reasons for this is to be found in the disinclination of the “socialist rule”
after 1945 to facilitate (i.e. permit) any objective research of the corpus of
Croatian civil politics of the period in question, warning of the fact that no
serious study of “contemporary history” (in the German science of history:‘Zeitgeschichte’) in Croatia — with due exceptions — had been conducted
before the 1970s; in fact, freedom of approach and research was achievable
only after 1990, when the imposed “embargo” on the life and work of Ivo
Pilar was lifted. Extensive research of Pilar’s work and activities began as
late as 2000 (the results of which are being published in Godiπnjak PILAR /
PILAR Yearbook, 1/2001 and 2/2002, by the Ivo Pilar Institute of Social
Sciences, Zagreb). The author highlights that, regarding a whole series of
unresearched questions, we have not yet (seriously) started. Nevertheless,
one can state, with certainty, that Pilar is one of the most intriguing
phenomena of Croatia’s public life of the time. He was a lawyer and
sociologist by profession (he studied in Vienna and Paris), and he gained
the attribute of a “theoretician of modernisation” as early as 1898 with his
work Secesija / Secession (although the field of his research here is fine art,
his discourse has much wider social implications). He worked in judicature
and banking, and had a reputable law practice from 1905 until he died
(first in Tuzla until 1920 and then in Zagreb). He was a noted political
publicist with two important works published (under pseudonyms) in the
original, i.e. in the German language (Südslawische Frage und der
Weltkrieg / The Southern-Slavic Question and the World War, Vienna 1918,
and Immer wieder Serbien / Always and Only Serbia, Berlin 1933). There
was considerable interest in the Southern-Slavic question in the world even
after World War I (one of the people who was presented with a copy by
the author himself was the then American president Harding).
Professionally and scientifically, Pilar was interested in several different
disciplines: law, geopolitics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, literary
theoretical questions and history (from medieval to contemporary). He was
politically active between 1906 and 1918 not only in Bosnia and
Herzegovina (where he lived and worked for 20 years) but also in the
entire Habsburg Monarchy, attempting in vain to get the country’s ruling
elites to implement administrative, legal and political reforms, firmly
believing that these reforms were the only possible way to preserve this
Central-European union of nations. He was opposed, on principle, to the
constitution of a common Southern-Slavic state, having rightly cautioned of
the Great Serbian hegemony. Thus, from 1918 he was under the watchful
eye of the authorities — so disinclined to him ‡ of the Kingdom of Serbs,
Croats and Slovenes/Yugoslavia. He then became widely socially active,
although remained politically active too “behind the curtain”, having
established contacts from the time of the murder of Stjepan Radić in the
parliament building in Belgrade with some of the most distinguished
Croatian politicians (Ante Trumbić, Vladko Maček et al.). He died in Zagreb
under mysterious circumstances that remain unresolved to date (suicide?
political murder?).
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
67576
URI
Publication date:
15.11.2006.
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