Frano Supilo

Frano Supilo (born November 30, 1870 in Cavtat / Konavle , Dalmatia , † September 25, 1917 in London ) was a Croatian politician and journalist in Austria-Hungary . In the years leading up to World War I, he was a major advocate of Croatian national interests and a leading representative of Yugoslavism in the Habsburg Monarchy .

Frano Supilo (1907)

Life

Political struggle in the Habsburg Empire

Supilo came from a humble background and began his fight for a union of the southern Slavs early on . At the age of 13 he protested against Crown Prince Rudolf during his visit to Dubrovnik in 1883 . The student was then suspended from classes. Nevertheless, he successfully studied law and advocated the unification of the Austrian crown land of Dalmatia with the Hungarian kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia as a first step in the direction of Yugoslavia . In 1895 he became one of the leaders of the Croatian Legal Party ( Hrvatska stranka prava HSK). From 1890 to 1899 he headed the magazine Crvena Hrvatska in Dubrovnik, in 1900 he founded the daily newspaper Novi list in Fiume, which he published until 1915 and made it the most important organ of the Yugoslav movement. He was also a member of the Dalmatian state parliament and from 1905 to 1909 a member of the Hungarian parliament in Budapest .

On his initiative, Croatian parliamentarians from Dalmatia, Croatia and Istria met in Fiume on October 3, 1905 and passed the resolution of Fiume / Rijeka , which called for a unification of the Croatian countries and a revision of the Croatian-Hungarian compromise . The following resolution from Zadar of October 17th had the ultimate goal of establishing an independent Yugoslav state. Between 1905 and 1909, Supilo, Ante Trumbić and the representative of the Serbs in Croatia-Slavonia Svetozar Pribićević were the leading figures in the politics of the new course . In 1910, Supilo left the Croatian-Serbian coalition because of disagreements over the status of the Croatian countries and Bosnia-Herzegovina .

Map Austria-Hungary
05. Dalmatia
07. Coastal region
17. Croatia and Slavonia
18. Bosnia and Herzegovina

In the Vienna Friedjung Trial of December 1909 he successfully sued Heinrich Friedjung, who had been supplied with forged documents by the Vienna Foreign Ministry, for defamation.

Political struggle in exile

Monument in Rijeka

After the assassination attempt in Sarajevo , Supilo went into exile in Italy and, after the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and 1915, propagated the Yugoslav cause on trips to France , Great Britain and Russia .

His memorandum of December 1914 already expressed detailed ideas about the coming South Slav state. This state would have covered 260,000 km² , consisting of the southern parts of Carinthia and Styria , Carniola , the entire Kronland coastal region (with Trieste), Dalmatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Slavonia with Fiume, southern Hungary (a little north of the Mur , south of Pécs and Szeged ), as well as Montenegro and what was then Serbia . Of the 14 million inhabitants, 12.7 million would have been southern Slavs.

The head of the Foreign Office , the British Foreign Minister Edward Gray , even personally promised Supilo on September 1, 1915 that if the Serbian consent was given, Bosnia, Herzegovina, South Dalmatia, Slavonia and Croatia would be allowed "to determine their own fate". The influence of South Slav politicians in exile like Supilo within the population at home was very small until the last year of the war.

On April 30, 1915, Supilo was one of the co-founders of the South Slavic Committee (Jugoslovanski Odbor) in London, consisting of emigrated South Slav politicians from Austria-Hungary, which on July 20, 1917, the Corfu Declaration on the establishment of a united kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes signed under the rule of the Karađorđević dynasty . But as early as April 5, 1916, Supilo, as the most important Croatian member, had left the committee because it was not prepared to guarantee the Croats equal rights in the new state.

Supilo managed to uncover the secret treaty of London , in which Italy, among other things, large parts of Dalmatia had been promised, and was thus able to initiate the successful fight of the southern Slavs against the treaty early on.

The almost hopeless situation of the Croatian exile policy between Austria-Hungary, Serbia and Italy caused him a severe nervous breakdown in 1917 , of which he died a little later in exile in London.

Honors

Yugoslav postage stamp from 1971

There are busts or statues of Supilo in several places in the state, including in Rijeka, also in his hometown Cavtat. In addition, the Yugoslav post office honored him with a special postage as early as 1971. The occasion was the 100th birthday of the national politician.

Fonts

Politika u Hrvatskoj (Politics in Croatia), Fiume 1911, Reprint, Zagreb 1953.
Politički spisi, članci, govori. (Political Writings, Articles and Speeches), Zagreb 1970.
Izabrani politički spisi. (Selected Political Writings), Zagreb 2000.

literature

Ivo Banac: The national question in Yugoslavia. Origins, history, politics. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY 1984, ISBN 0-8014-1675-2 .
Johannes Kalwoda: Reichsrat elections and party structure in Dalmatia (1907 to 1910). In: Österreichische Osthefte. 1-2 / 2004, pp. 21-50.

Web links

Commons : Frano Supilo - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

^ Frano Supilo (1870–1917) Cavtatportal.
^ Fred Singleton: A short history of the Yugoslav peoples. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1985, ISBN 0-521-27485-0 , p. 110.
↑ Wolf Dietrich Behschnitt: nationalism in Serbia and Croatia from 1830 to 1914. Analysis and typology of the national ideology. Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-486-49831-2 , p. 205
^ Wolfgang Kessler: Yugoslavia. The first try. Prehistory and foundation of the "First Yugoslavia". In: Jürgen Elvert (Ed.): The Balkans. A European crisis region, past and present. Steiner, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-515-07016-8 , pp. 91–118, here: p. 101.
^ Ivo Goldstein: Croatia until 1918. In: Dunja Melčić (ed.): The war in Yugoslavia. Prehistory, course and consequences manual. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaft, Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 978-3-531-33219-2 , pp. 46–66, here: p. 62.
↑ Friedrich Stieve (ed.): Iswolski in the world wars. Isvolski's diplomatic correspondence from 1914–1917. New documents from the secret files of the Russian state archives. On behalf of the German Foreign Office. Berlin 1925, p. 136 f.
^ Hajo Holborn : The Final Disintegration of the Habsburg Monarchy. In: Austrian History Yearbook. 3, Part 3, 1967, pp. 189-205, here: p. 204.
^ Wolfgang Kessler : Yugoslavia. The first try. Prehistory and foundation of the "First Yugoslavia". In: Jürgen Elvert (Ed.): The Balkans. A European crisis region, past and present. Steiner, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-515-07016-8 , pp. 91-118, here: p. 102.
↑ Philip Adler: The struggle of the South Slavs against the Treaty of London from its signing to the end of the First World War. Unprinted dissertation, Vienna 1961.

personal data
SURNAME	Supilo, Frano
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Supilo, Franjo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Croatian politician and journalist in Austria-Hungary
DATE OF BIRTH	November 30, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH	Cavtat
DATE OF DEATH	September 25, 1917
Place of death	London

[1] Frano Supilo (1870–1917) Cavtatportal.

[2] Fred Singleton: A short history of the Yugoslav peoples. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1985, ISBN 0-521-27485-0 , p. 110.

[3] Wolf Dietrich Behschnitt: nationalism in Serbia and Croatia from 1830 to 1914. Analysis and typology of the national ideology. Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-486-49831-2 , p. 205

[4] Wolfgang Kessler: Yugoslavia. The first try. Prehistory and foundation of the "First Yugoslavia". In: Jürgen Elvert (Ed.): The Balkans. A European crisis region, past and present. Steiner, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-515-07016-8 , pp. 91–118, here: p. 101.

[5] Ivo Goldstein: Croatia until 1918. In: Dunja Melčić (ed.): The war in Yugoslavia. Prehistory, course and consequences manual. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaft, Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 978-3-531-33219-2 , pp. 46–66, here: p. 62.

[6] Friedrich Stieve (ed.): Iswolski in the world wars. Isvolski's diplomatic correspondence from 1914–1917. New documents from the secret files of the Russian state archives. On behalf of the German Foreign Office. Berlin 1925, p. 136 f.

[7] Hajo Holborn : The Final Disintegration of the Habsburg Monarchy. In: Austrian History Yearbook. 3, Part 3, 1967, pp. 189-205, here: p. 204.

[8] Wolfgang Kessler : Yugoslavia. The first try. Prehistory and foundation of the "First Yugoslavia". In: Jürgen Elvert (Ed.): The Balkans. A European crisis region, past and present. Steiner, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-515-07016-8 , pp. 91-118, here: p. 102.

[9] Philip Adler: The struggle of the South Slavs against the Treaty of London from its signing to the end of the First World War. Unprinted dissertation, Vienna 1961.