Petar Kočić

Petar Kočić ( Serbian - Cyrillic Петар Кочић ) (born June 29, 1877 in Stričići near Banja Luka ; † August 27, 1916 in Belgrade ) was a Serbian writer.

Statue of Petar Kočić in Banja Luka.

Life

Kočić was a Serb from Bosnia . His mother died early and his father became an Orthodox priest. Petar first attended school in the Gomionici monastery, from 1891 in Banja Luka and in 1895 the grammar school in Sarajevo , where he was expelled from school because of his Serbian nationalism and therefore graduated in Belgrade in 1899. He then studied at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Vienna . From this time he emerged as a writer, was a brief teacher in Skopje and two years later in Sarajevo employee of the Serbian publishing house Prosvjeta . He was released after participating in a strike. In 1906 he took part in a congress of Yugoslav writers in Sofia. In 1907 he founded the Otadžbina magazine in Banja Luka. He also founded an anti-Austrian nationalist and social revolutionary political grouping and was elected to the Bosnian parliament (sabor) in 1910. As an opponent of the regime, Kočić was finally sent to prison. Before the First World War, a nervous disease developed. He was taken to Belgrade for treatment, where he died in a mental hospital in 1916.

Works

As a Serbian nationalist, Kočić was an opponent of Austria-Hungary. His best-known work, the dramatized satire Jazavac pred sudom (The badger in court), enjoyed great popularity in 1908 after the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austria. The satire was directed against an arrogant and insulting Austrian state administration that spoke the local language poorly. In addition, Kočić wrote novellas and short lyric prose, in which he often described primeval violent types of his Bosnian homeland.

• Jazavac pred sudom , satirical drama 1904
• S planine i ispod planine (С планине и испод планине), short stories 1907
• Jauci sa Zmijanja (Јауци са Змијања), short stories 1910
• The Archpriest of Mračaj, story, German, in: Croatian and Bosnian novels, 1940

Afterlife

A library and school in Banja Luka were named after Petar Kočić, and a monument to the author is also located in the town.
In Bosnia and Hercegovina Kočić is depicted on some banknotes, so his portrait can be seen on the 100 KM banknote (convertible mark), but already during the Yugoslav wars on some inflation notes issued in Banja Luka .

literature

• Kočić Petar. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 4, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1969, p. 24.

Web links

Commons : Petar Kočić  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Serbian page with detailed representation and original texts by the author