DRAGUTIN LERMAN'S TRAVEL RECORDS AND DIARIES

Abstract

Dragutin Lerman (1863-1918) started keeping his African diaries as early as in 1988, which roughly coincides with Veber's Put u Carigrad (Journey to Constantinople). Over a period of eight years Lerman meticulously recorded everything he - as a self-taught explorer and post-romantic enthusiast - found of interest for both Europeans and black Africans. His work has been reverenced in various ethnological-anthropological approaches and museology, as well as in Zlata Kolarić-Kišul's fictionalised Lerman's biography.
To which type of travel diarism can Lerman's early (African) diaries and late records from the monastery of Kreševo be pertained? Though the extent of Lerman's complete works is not vast, is it really so minor as not to deserve to be at least mentioned in chronological lists and textbooks of Croatian travel prose? Index nominorum of pioneer travel writers between Nemčić and Matoš fails to recognise him. Are we to believe that no literary value is to be found in his work, despite Matko Peić's qualifying it as 'eruptive'? Are we to admit that we have suppressed the recognition of the first Croatian Africanist in the context of Croatian travel literature at the beginning of the 20th century?