Original scientific paper
Contributions to the biography of Admiral Anton Račić
Tonći Ćićerić
orcid.org/0000-0003-4046-1242
Abstract
This paper, based on family and public documents and other available sources and testimonies, is trying to reconstruct the life and professional path of Anton Račić, a Rear Admiral of the Austro-Hungarian Navy who, following an exceptional military career, when retired, settled with his family in Solin, where he also found his last resting place.
Anton Karl Račić origins from an old Croatian family, mentioned in the regions of Lika and Dalmatia as early as in the mid 13th century as a part of the Mogorović tribal community. He was born in 1857 in Venice, in a family where the naval profession made part of the generational heritage. Following the boyhood spent in Venice and graduation from the Royal Naval Academy in Rijeka, in 1875 he joined the Austro-Hungarian Navy, where he served as long as till his retirement in 1907. In the Navy he made a remarkable career, advancing from a cadet to a Linienschiffskapitän. Besides serving on board several Austro-Hungarian warships, and because of the interest he showed in technology, especially the torpedo systems, Račić was also appointed a member of the Naval-Technical Committee (Marinetechnisches Komitee) and the Hydrographical Institute (Hydrographisches Amt) in Pula (Pola). He was also a supervising officer in the Arsenal in Pula, instructor at the Naval Academy (K.u.K. Marine-Akademie) in Rijeka (Fiume), and also cooperated with the Torpedofabrik Whitehead & Comp torpedo factory in Rijeka. In the patent offices in Austro-Hungary, Great Britain, France and Denmark he registered about a dozen of patents, thereby significantly improving the contemporary torpedo systems. During his career he was decorated several times with high decorations from his country, but also from the Ottoman Empire, the Kingdom of Greece and the Kingdom of Montenegro.
After his disability retirement, in 1907 in Karlovac he married Helena Johanna Emma Ratschitsch, with who he had sons Anton Karl and Georg Eduard. In 1909 he moved with his family to Split, where he spent his retirement days engaged in intellectual activities and running a private quarry at the locality of Stinice, between Split and Solin.
At the beginning of the World War I, he was reactivated in the Austro-Hungarian Navy as the Commander of the Metković Naval Port, through which the entire logistics towards Bosnia was carried on. In 1916 he was advanced to the rank of a Kontreadmiral. After the end of the war, he returned to a quiet civil life in Split, in the 1920s to have moved with his family to Solin, where he died from pneumonia in November 1933. He is buried at the old cemetery at Gospin otok in Solin.
The wide scope of his interests, from seamanship and technology to genealogy, archaeology, history, ethnology and ornithology, undoubtedly places him among the intellectual elite of his time. Although in Solin he spent just the last years of his life, he made a significant contribution to the development of civil life of the town at the turn of the 1920s to the 1930s.
Keywords
Anton Račić; Austro-Hungarian Navy; Solin
Hrčak ID:
247947
URI
Publication date:
1.12.2020.
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