FAMOUS CROATS, Antun Mihanović

Antun Mihanović Antun Mihanović, a Croatian writer and politician, was born on 10 June 1796 in Zagreb, where he completed grammar school and graduated in philosophy and law, and in 1813 began working as a court notary. From 1815 he served as a military judge and resided mainly in Italy (Venice and Padua), then as an administrative clerk in Rijeka, and from 1836 to 1858 he was the Austrian consul in Belgrade, Thessaloniki, Smyrna, Constantinople and Bucharest. For some time, he travelled America trading in wines. He died in Novi Dvori near Klanjec on 14 November 1861. In a Kajkavian dialect he wrote the Enlightenment and Renaissance treatise Reč domovini od hasnovitosti pisanja vu domorodnom jeziku (A Word to the Homeland about the Benefits from Writing in Mother Tongue) (Vienna, 1815), in which he advocated the introduction of a single national language, following the example of the great European nations. In 1818 in Venice, he discovered a transcript of Gundulić's Osman and published a to proclamation on the need for publishing it, but no avail. He wrote love and patriotic poems and discovered several monuments of early Slavic literacy (the Zograf Gospel, Mihanović's apostle). As a supporter of the Illyrian movement, in Gaj’s newspaper Danica in 1835 he published a romantic reveille Horvatska domovina (Croatian Homeland), in which Croatia is a beautiful and famous country, and Croats are a historically old, brave and freedom-loving people. The first and second, and the last and penultimate stanzas became the text of the Croatian anthem named after the first verse - Lěpa naša domovino (Our Beautiful Homeland). The tune was composed in 1846 by border officer Josif Runjanin. It gained general popularity at the end of the century, and was officially considered the Croatian national anthem after it was performed in 1891. It was first performed in the Parliament on 29 October 1918, during the cessation of state relations between Croatia and Austria-Hungary. By the decision of the Parliament, Lijepa naša (Our Beautiful) became the anthem of the Socialist Republic of Croatia in 1972. The verse Kud li šumiš, svijetu reci (Wherever you go, tell the world) was changed in 1990 to the verse Sinje more, svijetu reci. (Blue sea, tell the world) and that version was confirmed by the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia as the national anthem. Professor Vinko Brešić, PhD