So mag der Hauptplatz wohl ausgesehen haben, als mein Urgroßvater in Zagreb lebte. Seine Tochter wird sicher an diesen Marktständen eingekauft haben. Ich freue mich, dass wir am verlängerten Wochenende von Fronleichnam 2012 diese Stadt besuchen können. Am letzten Pfarrball ist uns das Glückslos mit dem zweiten Hauptpreis zugefallen, das uns zwei Nächte im Arcotel Allegra beschert. – Danke nochmals den Sponsoren der Pfarre!
Im Hintergrund ist das Denkmal von Josip Jelacic, einem kroatischen Politiker der Relovutionsjahre 1848, zu sehen. Er versuchte im Verband der K.u.K. Monarchie verbleibend mehr Freiheit für Kroatien zu erreichen. So wurde er zum „Helden“ in Zagreb und Wien und gleichermaßen von verschiedensten Seiten angefeindet.
Was würde er sich wohl denken bei den Problemen des „vereinigten Europa“ in einer EU die zur Zeit Österreich und Kroatien trennt?
Gerade heute, am Jahrestag seiner „Installation“ am 4. Juni 1848, fand ich diese kurze Zusammenfassung eines Artikels über sein Wirken.
Ban Jelacic 4.6.1948
Jelačić was a product of both national and pro-Habsburg feelings and loyalties which he did not perceive to be contradictory. When he entered Zagreb on his inaugural day, the whole city came out to greet him. It was an historic occasion. Croatians and many other Slavs looked at him as the only hope for a better future in the Monarchy. He declared that his only goal was the good of the people and his native land.
On the other hand, when he came to Vienna to meet Battyanyi, he was greeted again as a hero, but now by the Vienna crowd. He declared to them “I wish a great, strong, powerful, free, and undivided Austria.” He tried to synthesize these two conflicting goals. He believed that the first could be achieved through the second one. But the Habsburgs had other aims and plans for him, Croatia, and the empire.
Jelačić has been attacked from many sides, as a Panslavist, as a pro Russian, as an Austrophile, and a reactionary, among other and often contradictory labels. Even after his death, he was a hero to some and a villain to others. To Croatians he became a symbol of the struggle against the Magyars and a martyr of the devious Austrian regime. A monument was erected in the main square in Zagreb to his honor and patriotic songs about him carried his name to the younger generations. After the Second Word War, however, he was condemned once more as an antirevolutionary and reactionary figure. His monument was removed from public eye and the songs were banned. But his name could not be obliterated from the memory of the Croatian people. As soon as the communist regime in Croatia collapsed his monument was returned to its rightful place and Zagreb’s main city square bears Jelačić’s name again. He continues to be a symbol of Croatian enthusiasm for freedom and independence.
Source: Josip Jelacic – Ban of Croatia by Ante Čuvalo – Chicago; (Published in: Review of Croatian History, IV. no. 1, 2008, pp. 13-27)