Moral Migraines
Krleža, Križanić, and the (South)Slavic Idea
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
The Croatian Dominican priest Juraij Križanić is considered the first Pan-Slavist. In the 20th century, he played an important role in debates over the Croatian nation and South Slavic unity. One of the most important authors of modern Croatian literature, Miroslav Krleža, also devoted a great deal of attention to him. Krleža saw in the clergyman a figure whose life and work ex-pressed the dilemma of a small nation on the periphery of Europe. A torn and marginalised intellectual, Križanić was allegedly the prototype of a Croatian Don Quijote, and Krleža considered himself to be his successor – right in the middle of the Second World War.
(Osteuropa 12/2009, pp. 227–236)