Jovan Cvijic

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Jovan Cvijić, 1911

Jovan Cvijić (born September 29, jul. / 11 October 1865 greg. In Loznica ; † 16th January 1927 in Belgrade ) was a Serbian and Yugoslav geographer . As a teacher of the Great School (since 1893), founding member and professor of the University of Belgrade (since 1904) and President of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts , he made a contribution to the diverse exploration of the Balkan Peninsula . He was the founder of the Serbian Geographical Society (1910) and introduced karstology as a scientific subject within geomorphology. He was the first scientist to take up the glaciological research and periodization of the Quaternary geology on the Balkan Peninsula. Through academic stations in Vienna and Paris, he published his works mostly in German, French and English. The monographs on karst geomorphology and anthropo- and ethnography of the Balkan Peninsula have remained standard works of geographic literature to this day ( La peninsule balcanique and La geographie des terrains calcaires ). Cvijić took part in the peace negotiations in Paris in 1919 as President of the National Expert Committees in an advisory capacity. Since 1961 the Institute of Geography of the Serbian Academy of Science has been named after Jovan Cvijić.

Life

Jovan Cvijić's house in Belgrade now houses the Jovan Cvijić Museum

family

Cvijić came from a poor background and was born as the son of Loznica merchant Todor Cvijić and Marija Cvijić (née Avramović) on October 11, 1865 in Loznica as the third of six children. The paternal family came from the highlands of Durmitor through Cvijić's great-grandfather Cvijo Spasojević (called Cvijo Vrelo) . Cvijić's great-grandfather was a freedom fighter in the First and Second Serbian Uprising in 1804–1813.

The birth house of Cvijić's parents was in the flat part of Loznica, which was called Stara Varoš (German Old Market ). There was a sinkhole and a well close to the parents' house , the water of which disappeared into a nearby ponor . These were Cvijić's first objects of illustration of the principles of karst hydrology that he later conceived in his dissertation .

school

Cvijić's childhood was shaped by the upbringing of his mother Marija and his uncle Pera Avramović. Jovan Cvijić attended eight years of elementary school and the first two years of high school in Loznica. Since there was no full high school in Loznica, Jovan Cvijić attended the other classes in Šabac , whose school was considered the most prestigious in Serbia at the time.

He was only able to attend this educational institution with the financial support of his parents and the Loznica community. After his parents got into financial difficulties and the city no longer gave regular donations, Jovan Cvijić was dependent on the support of a Šabac merchant.

The school's physics and geography teachers, Ranko Petrović and Vladimir Karić, were vital to Cvijić's further careers. Petrović was a supporter of the socialist idea and influenced Cvijić's ideological direction significantly. He supplied Cvijić with socialist papers, the student magazine "Pobratimstvo" and newspapers from Belgrade, Novi Sad and Kragujevac. Cvijić also dealt with articles by Svetozar Marković , Pera Todorović and Nikolai Gavrilowitsch Tschernyshevsky . Cvijić himself said:

“ The socialist books were essential to me. Her thoughts were in line with the ideals I carried within me and inherited from my mother ... Everything else, except thoughts about the welfare of humanity, became secondary to me . Jovan Cvijić "

- Iz uspomen i života (Autobiografija i drugi spisi). P. 42

In 1881 Jovan Cvijić moved to Belgrade in order to obtain the full high school diploma there. There he also learned French, German and English. This later helped him as a student of Velika Škola , since the geographic and scientific textbooks of John Herschel , Archibald Geikie or Thomas Henry Huxley were only available to Cvijić in their original versions. Although Cvijić passed his Matura with the highest distinction, he could not immediately enroll at the university due to the lack of financial resources of his parents. In 1884 he returned to Belgrade to apply for medicine. After a chance encounter with his old geography teacher from Šabac, Vladimir Karić, he enrolled on his advice with the prospect of studying abroad in the Faculty of Science and Mathematics of the Great School in Belgrade.

Education

During his studies from the semester 1884/1885, Jovan Cvijić began to deal with scientific and geographical issues of the Balkan Peninsula on excursions. As a result, his first publication appeared in 1887. After completing his studies, he first became a teacher at the Second Belgrade Gymnasium, where he taught general geography.

He then traveled to Vienna in 1889 as a state scholarship holder. He attended the lectures of Albrecht Penck , Eduard Suess , Julius Hann and Wilhelm Tomaschek at the University of Vienna , where he defended his dissertation The Karst Phenomenon on January 22nd, 1893 . For Cvijić, Penck and Suess were instrumental in developing the methodological resources for research questions in tectonics, Quaternary geology and geomorphology. Cvijić later transferred the observations made with Penck and Suess on excursions in the central and peripheral Alps to the conditions found on the Balkan peninsula. In particular, he was the first to transfer Penck's Quaternary morphological work in the thesis of the alpine glacial cycles with the glacial -phological processes of the glacial series and the Quaternary history in general to the Balkan Peninsula.

After obtaining the doctorate degree, Cvijić was appointed full professor at the Velika Škola ("Big School"), the forerunner of the University of Belgrade , on March 21, 1893 .

By far the most effective field of activity of Jovan Cvijić was his anthropographic and ethnographic work, which he dealt with during his emigration to the Sorbonne in Paris. His work La Péninsule balcanique - géographie humaine , published in Paris in 1918, was published in 1918 in an abbreviated form in English as Zones of Balkan Civilization in an essay in New York, from which the map shown comes from. Cvijić's ethnographic school influenced both French and German ethnographic research.

Scientific work

Cvijić's doctoral thesis on forms of the karst was soon accepted as a standard work in international specialist circles. Ferdinand von Richthofen and Sir Archibald Geikie were among the personal well-wishers. The work was published in the Annales de Géographie and the communications of the K. and K. geographical society in Vienna. The new karst terminology used by Cvijić found its way into geomorphological and geological terminology. Cvijić's work not only developed the concept of karst as a geomorphological surface form of the earth, but also influenced hydrological research areas through the investigation of karst hydrological phenomena . Karstology and caving in particular have developed from this as an affiliated department .

Cvijić was a professor of the "Great School" throughout his scientific career, from 1905 in the renamed University of Belgrade. 1894–1907 he taught all subjects in the physical-geographic and anthropogeographic departments.

Physico-geographical research

For 38 years, Cvijić made repeated research trips. They began in what was then the Kingdom of Serbia, but later expanded to all parts of the Balkan Peninsula. On some expeditions he was busy with field work for up to four months. His main focus was initially on the tectonic structure of the mountains. From this point of view he wanted to determine the tectonic delimitation or connection and the character as well as strike direction and disturbances of the Alpidic systems between the Alps and Asia Minor, which, according to Eduard Suess, represented a unit. In addition, Cvijić's preferred scientific interest was glaciological studies of the high mountains, the continuation of karstological recordings and the cryptodepressive systems of the Adriatic coast and the pelargonic basin of Macedonia.

Cvijić was regarded as a tireless researcher who also explored remote regions of the Balkan Peninsula throughout his life. Among other things, he traveled to the regions of Macedonia , Sanjak , Kosovo , Bulgaria and the Asian Minor Peninsula, which were then part of the Ottoman Empire . His resulting work on the geography of the Balkan Peninsula has not been repeated to this day. In addition to Penck, Cvijić is also a pioneer of Quaternary research on the mountains of the Balkan Peninsula ( Prokletije , Prenj , Pirin , Orjen ). The glacial history in an overall view of the Balkans in his first volume of geomorphology has remained fundamental.

"Ethnographic Map of the Balkan Peninsula" by Jovan Cvijić, 1918

However, Cvijić's main scientific geomorphological work is the study of karst phenomena of the Dinarides . The categorization of karst forms, which goes back to the Cvijić classification in terms of their terminological framework and geomorphological classification, has been transferred into international terminology and dealt with global phenomena of surface forms based on carbonate solution and underground karst form treasures. Examples are Polje , Doline, Ponor, Jama (karst caves).

The influential subdivision of Cvijićs of differently developed karst types into Holokarst and Merokarst in Europe is subject to stronger criticism in contemporary geomorphology, but nonetheless fixed terms that include the Dinaric Karst as a type of holocarst, the Central European Karst Swabian Alb , Jura to the Merokarst. This also anticipates the climatic geomorphological subdivision that Büdel worked out later .

Anthropogeography

During his travels, Jovan Cvijić also collected his first ethnographic and anthropographic impressions, which he processed in his later major work on the civilizations of the Balkan peninsula ( Zones of Civilization of the Balkan penisula , 1918). This anthropogeographic work was carried out with the help of his students, who prepare the necessary recordings and material collections. Even before the Balkan Wars, this group grew into the tribe of employees who later formed the so-called Cvijić Geographic School in Belgrade.

In several works, Cvijić referred to all southern Slavs as Yugoslavs . He differentiated between Serbo-Croatians , Bulgarians , Slovenes and Macedonians or Slavs from Macedonia , which he classified according to their religious affiliation: Croats would be Roman Catholic Serbo-Croatians, while Serbs would be Christian-Orthodox Serbo-Croatians.

politics

In 1912, a route variant of the Danube-Adriatic Railway, presented by Jovan Cvijic, was published which, through the results of the First Balkan War, provided for Serbia's Adriatic connection from Merdare via Kosovo Polje to the Drin Gulf on the Albanian coast. The politically explosive project finally came on the agenda at the London conference, which Cvijić's route adopted while receiving international guarantees.

In the function of Serbia's emissary, Cvijić stayed in London in 1906 and 1915, and in Paris in 1915 and as an emigrant from 1917-1919. In 1914 and 1915 he assisted the government of Serbia and the General Staff as an advisory expert on geography and ethnography. When the First World War broke out in 1914, Cvijić was commissioned by the Serbian government to define the boundaries of a possible future Yugoslavia . The results of his work on this were named by the Serbian government as official war targets in the First World War. Cvijić resisted the calls to run for prime minister of the government, and he did not join any party during his life. Cvijić had presented two possible solutions: a Greater Yugoslav solution, in which the Yugoslav state would include, in addition to the territories from 1918/19, large parts of today's southern Styria and southern Carinthia, as well as the coastal region including Trieste , and a Little Yugoslav solution, except for Yugoslavia Serbia should include Bosnia , Dalmatia and Slavonia as a minimum requirement and in which “at least the majority of the Christian Orthodox Yugoslavs would be united”. The latter was later often used for Greater Serbian propaganda purposes.

On the contemporary political and economic questions of the Balkan Peninsula, especially during the annexation crisis as well as the Balkan Wars and the territorial reorganization of the Balkans as a result of the First World War , Cvijić commented in numerous specialist publications as well as lectures and lectures. In 1917 and 1919 he taught at the Sorbonne . In 1919/20 he took part in the peace negotiations in Versailles as chairman of the territorial section of the Serbian delegation . Cvijić's demarcation based on ethnic criteria on the territory of the former KuK monarchy in the emerging state of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was sustainable. Due to the high reputation of Cvijić and his colleague Pupin , the newly formed state was able to secure important territorial gains ( Banat , Baranja , Dalmatia , Julian Alps ). This also means for the first time that the capital of Serbia and the former Yugoslavia, Belgrade, was no longer on the former military border , and Vojvodina, one of the most fertile areas in Europe with a large Hungarian population, came to Serbia as the hinterland of Belgrade.

Awards

Memorial plaque at the house of Jovan Cvijić

museum

A legate of Jovan Cvijićs was found in the form of his cabinet in the rectorate of the Geographical Association in the University of Belgrade. Cvijić's own house, which he built from 1905–1907 on Kopitareva gradina, the former garden of the Belgrade metropolis, in what was then Teodosijeva ulica br. 5 (today Ulica Jelene Četković), houses today's Jovan Cvijić Museum. The large villa, like the other villas of the Belgrade upper class at the time, which were also built on the plot, was designed by the most important Belgrade architects of the time, who built the houses in the style of Classicism and Art Nouveau. Cvijić's house was lavishly designed inside by the interior decorator Dragutin Inkiostri Medenjak , who came to Belgrade from Italy in 1905 and was also responsible for the facade design and decoration of numerous public buildings such as the Serbian National Theater. Cvijić House is considered the highlight of Inkiostri's private work. The study and library in his house formed the center of Cvijić's private life, in which all of his handwritten notes and sketches were found. For security reasons, the library and study were moved to the New University building during World War II, where they burned down during the Allied bombing in 1944. Today's museum is dedicated to the scientific work of Cvijić as well as his personal possessions.

additional

Cvijić's portrait is shown on the 500 dinar note issued by the Serbian National Bank.

Works

Books

  • The karst phenomenon. Vienna 1893.
  • Karst. Belgrade 1896.
  • Morphological and glacial studies from Bosnia, Hercegovina and Montenegro. Volume 1, The high mountains and the Cañonthäler, Vienna, treatises of the Geogr. Gesell. Vienna, 1900.
  • Morphological and glacial studies from Bosnia, Hercegovina and Montenegro. Volume 2, The Karst Poljen, Treatises of the Geogr. Society. Vienna, 1901.
  • Basics of the geography and geology of Macedonia and Old Serbia: together with observations in Thrace, Thessaly, Epirus and northern Albania. Petermanns Geographical Communications, supplement, 1908.
  • La péninsule balkanique :, geographie humaine. Paris 1918 (Reprint: Hannover 2006, ISBN 3-939659-32-0 )
  • Zones of Civilization of the Balkan Peninsula. Geographical Review, American Geographical Society 1918.
  • Geomorfologija. Volume 1. and Volume 2, Belgrade 1924/1926.
  • La geographie des terrains calcaires. Belgrade 1960.

items

literature

Monographs

  • Tatjana Koričanac: Beogradski Atlas Jovana Cvijića: vek i po od rođenja -1865-2015 . SANU: Muzej grada Beograda, Galerija SANU, Beograd 2015, ISBN 978-86-7025-670-5 .

Essays

  • Konrad Clewing, Edvin Pezo: Jovan Cvijić as historian and nation builder . On the yield and limits of his anthropogeographical approach to migration history. In: Markus Krzoska, Hans-Christian Maner (Hrsg.): Profession and calling: History and nation-building in East Central and Southeastern Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. LIT Verlag, Münster 2005, ISBN 3-8258-8053-2 , pp. 265-297.
  • Svetozar Ćulibrk: Cvijić's Sociological Research into Society in the Balkans. In: The British Journal of Sociology. Vol. 22, No. 4, Dec 1971, pp. 423-440.
  • Derek C. Ford : Jovan Cvijić and the founding of karst geomorphology. In: Environmental Geology. 51, 2007, pp. 675-684. (springer: PDF)
  • Nicolas Ginsburger: Les Balkans avec ou sans Cvijic. Geographes et geologues universitaires austro-allemands, français et serbes dans un espace européen périphérique (1893–1934). In: Clerc Pascal, Robic, Marie-Claire (eds.): Des géographes hors-les-murs? Itinéraires dans un Monde en mouvement (1900–1940). L'Harmattan, Paris 2015, pp. 323–354.
  • Nicolas Ginsburger: Réseaux académiques et circulations savantes entre guerres et paix (1912–1919). Les expertises de Jovan Cvijić et de ses collègues geographes à travers les cas de Trieste et Fiume. In: Cybergeo: European Journal of Geography. [En ligne], Epistémologie, Histoire de la Géographie, Didactique, document 784, mis en ligne le 30 juin 2016.

Biographical entries

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Phil Hughes, Jamie Woodward: Glacial and Periglacial Environments. In: Jamie Woodward (Ed.): The Physical Geography of the Mediterranean . Oxford Regional Environments, Oxford 2009, ISBN 978-0-19-926803-0 .
  2. ↑ http://www.gi.sanu.ac.rs/en/history/history.html Geographical Institute "Jovan Cvijić" of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Art - History
  3. ↑ Milorad Vasović: Jovan Cvijić - o svom i našem vremenu . IP Princip, Belgrade 1995, ISBN 86-82273-03-9 , p. 11.
  4. ↑ Milorad Vasović, p. 11.
  5. ↑ Joan Cvijić: Iz uspomen života i (i Autobiografija drugi Spisi) . Srpska književna zadruga, LVIII, Vol. 395, Beograd 1965.
  6. ↑ a b Milorad Vasović, p. 12.
  7. ↑ Milorad Vasović, p. 15.
  8. ↑ American Geographical Society Honorary Fellowships, The Cullum Geographical Medal 1924 to Jovan Cvijić ( Memento from March 26, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 80 kB)
  9. ↑ Tatjana Koričanac: Beogradski Atlas Jovana Cvijića - vek i po od rođenja 1865–2015 . SANU, Muzej grada Beograda, Galerija SANU 165; Beograd 2015, ISBN 978-86-7025-670-5 Here p. 81.

Web links

Commons : Jovan Cvijić  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Cvijic, Jovan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Yugoslav geographer
DATE OF BIRTH October 11, 1865
PLACE OF BIRTH Loznica
DATE OF DEATH January 16, 1927
Place of death Belgrade