Letters of Ivan Aničić (Zlovečera) to Antun Flego (1910 – 1913)

Abstract

The “Student Correspondence” of Ivan Aničić to Anton Flego (1910-1913) is a valuable historical source not only for the study of the history of the Croatian Grammar School in Pazin, but also in the context of wider sociological, social and political processes in Pazin, Istria, the Littoral and Zagreb in the late 1910s. The first section in the letters, which refers to the time until Ivan Aničić’s maturity exam, brings new insights and previously unpublished data on the activities of the Pupils Association “Naprijed” (Forward) and the publication of the student newspaper of the same name of the Croatian Grammar School in Pazin. The letters contain reviews of student public lectures, modeled on lectures delivered by high school teachers in the Croatian Reading Room, relay information on friction within the Teachers Board, and in this context they vividly portray individual professors but also the social life of Pazin, where the Grammar School and its teachers deservedly occupied the central position. The second section of the letters is a complementary source on the activities of the Croatian-Slovenian Academic Society “Istria” and the “ABC Club” (ABC Society of Croatian University Student for the Teaching of the Illiterate) providing an array of information on educational projects and activities of the Society, the university and social-political engagement (especially regarding the struggle for reciprocity of the University of Zagreb in relation to the University of Vienna, but also an insight into the participation of Istrian students in the activities of the radical student organization of the Yugoslav Progressive Youth) as well as the internal divisions of the members into Liburnians and Istrians. As Ivan Anicic was a member of the secondary school and university student generation which, in the literary-historical context at the end of the Croatian Modernity (1892-1914) was called the generation of the “Young”, the published letters directly and synchronically place the small Istrian community in the European context. In the national context, letters are a valuable complementary source for the national study of the social-political work of the “Young“ in the period up to the outbreak of World War I. “Student correspondence” is an extraordinary and very rare display of knowledge, competences and spiritual life of an adolescent from the early 20th century. It follows the crises of maturation and growing up, provides insight into intimate, love events and reveals very clearly the image of a young man who achieves his school accomplishments without the financial support of his farming family.