Vladan Đorđević

Vladan Đorđević 1906

Vladan Djordjevic ( Serbian - Cyrillic Владан Ђорђевић * November 21 ^{. Jul} / 3. December  1844 ^greg. In Belgrade ; † 18th August 1930 in Baden near Vienna ) was a Serbian doctor, author and politician. 1897-1900 he was Prime Minister of his country.

Life

Vladan Đorđević had Serbian ancestors on his father's side and Zinzarian ancestors on his mother's side . He grew up in Belgrade, where he also attended high school. Even as a schoolboy he was involved in the Ujedinjena Omladina Srpska (German Association of Serbian Youth ), a national association whose main goal was to unite all Serbs in one state. From 1864 he studied medicine at the University of Vienna , where he received his doctorate in 1869 and trained as a surgeon over the next two years.

Returned to Serbia in 1871, Đorđević became a military doctor and head of the surgical department in the Belgrade military hospital. A year later he founded the Association of Serbian Doctors (Serbian Srpsko lekarsko društvo ), in 1873 he became the personal physician of Prince Milan Obrenović and from 1874 he published the medical journal Srpski arhiv za celokupno lekarstvo . In 1876 he was one of the founders of the Serbian Red Cross . 1876–1878 Đorđević took part in the war against the Ottoman Empire as a high medical officer . Since 1877 he was the commander in chief of the entire medical service of the Serbian army. In this position, Đorđević initiated extensive reforms of medical care in the army after the war. In 1885/86 he took part in the Serbian-Bulgarian War . Since 1888 he was a corresponding member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and since 1892 a full member .

Vladan Đorđević's political career began in the early 1880s. He joined the newly founded Progressive Party (Serbian Srpska napredna stranka ), which had its base mainly in the bourgeoisie of the few larger cities in Serbia. In 1884 Đorđević became mayor of Belgrade , in 1888 he joined the government of Nikola Hristić as a minister , where he was responsible for education and the economy. After replacing Hristić's cabinet, he became Serbian ambassador in Athens in 1891 and from 1894 he represented his country at the Sublime Porte in Constantinople, where he was able to obtain the appointment of a Serbian bishop in Ohrid .

In October 1897 Vladan Đorđević was appointed Prime Minister. At the same time he held the office of foreign minister. He owed his appointment to the influence of Milan Obrenović, who abdicated in 1889 in favor of his son Aleksandar , but after his return from exile (1893) he again had a lot of influence on his son. During Đorđević's reign, Milan Obrenović was commander-in-chief of the army and carried out extensive army reform. The internal political struggles between the Radical and the Liberal Party as well as the supporters and opponents of the Obrenovići could only temporarily contain Đorđević, nevertheless the Serbian economy developed well under his government.

In terms of foreign policy, the conflict with Montenegro was remarkable, as this small state had always been closely allied with Serbia. On the one hand, the competition played a role in the claims to the remnants of European Turkey, because Montenegro stood in the way of Serbian access to the Adriatic Sea. On the other hand, Milan Obrenović wanted to curb the influence of Prince Nikola Petrović-Njegoš, who was very popular among all southern Slavs, but especially among the Serbs . The former king and prime minister Đorđević started a campaign against Nikola and his family and secretly supported the Montenegrin opposition to the absolutist ruling prince. Nikola in turn conspired with the Serbian radical opposition around Nikola Pašić , against Đorđević and the ruling dynasty, whose overthrow the radicals then helped to bring about in 1903.

Đorđević had to resign in July 1900 because of the domestic political crisis that had arisen from the marriage of King Aleksandar with Draga Mašin . Then he withdrew from active politics. During the Austrian occupation of Serbia in World War I, Đorđević was interned from 1915 to 1918 because he had published pro-Russian articles during the Bosnian annexation crisis.

Journalistic activity

Since his return from Vienna in 1871, Vladan Đorđević has been active as a journalist and has tried his hand at very different areas. He published scientific papers in his medical field, he wrote historical and political writings and from 1875 to 1892 he published the journal Otadžbina (German fatherland). In 1906, Đorđević was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for having betrayed state secrets in his book Kraj jedne dinastije (dt. Case of a Dynasty) - it was about the murder of King Aleksandr. Apart from this work, Đorđević became known beyond the borders of Serbia through his racist anti-Albanian pamphlet "The Albanians and the Great Powers" , which he had printed in German in 1913 and which was intended as a pamphlet against the establishment of the Albanian state. In it he characterizes the Albanians as follows:

The arnautical type is thin and small, there is something gypsy, Phoenician in it. The Albanians are not only reminiscent of the Phoenicians, but also of the prehistoric people who slept in the trees to which they clung to with their tails. Through the later millennia, when the human tail was no longer needed, it withered so that today's humans have only a small trace of it in the bones of the tailbone. Only among the Albanians it seems that people were still truant in the XIX. Century to have given.

Works

• Istorija srpskog vojnog saniteta. 4 vols. (1879–86)
• The end of the Obrenovitch. Contributions to the history of Serbia 1897–1900.
• Kraj every dinastie. 3 vols. (1905–1906)
• Srpsko-turski council. 2 vols. (1907)
• The Serbian question. (1909)
• The Albanians and the great powers. (1913)
• Car Dušan. Historical novel, 3rd vol. (1919–1920)
• Srbija i Grčka 1891-1893. Prilog za istoriju Srpske diplomacije pri kraju 19. veka. (1923)
• Crna Gora i Austrija 1814-1894. (1924)
• Uspomene. (1927)

literature

• Holm Sundhaussen: History of Serbia. Vienna - Cologne - Weimar 2007. ISBN 978-3-205-77660-4
• Radoš Ljušić (ed.): Vlade Srbije, 1805-2005. Beograd 2005.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Novak Ražnatović: Crnogorsko-Srpski odnosi i pitanke prijestolonasleda u Srbji 1900-1903
2. ↑ V. Đorđević: The Albanians and the great powers. Leipzig 1913, p. 23. Cited by Holm Sundhausen on the Internet: Archived copy ( memento of the original from November 29, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.