Miroslav Brandt
Encyclopedia
Miroslav Brandt was a Croatia
n historian
, writer, publicist
and polymath
. He contributed to disparate areas ranging from politics to history of religions and literary translation. His polemical works helped preserve the national identity of Croats
under Yugoslavia.
near the Croatia
n town of Vinkovci
. He graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Zagreb
in 1948, specializing in history, geography and Latin. In 1954, he obtained his Ph.D. from the same university with the thesis Development of Economic and Social Relationships in Split
until the End of the 14th century. Brandt worked as a librarian in the National and University Library in Zagreb, a curator in the Historical Museum in Zagreb, an assistant at the Historical Institute of the Academy
. Finally, Brandt was a professor and vice-dean at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb for many years. He died in Zagreb.
The opus of Miroslav Brandt includes large encyclopedic works, polemics and articles, as well as literary works. The greatest work in the first category is The Medieval
Age of Historical Development, a monumental (around 800 pages) study presenting a detailed history of several centuries (starting from the 3rd) of European and Mediterranean history, describing the great clusters of civilizations of Western Christianity
, Byzantium
, Islam
and other Asian societies (he even included Central American cultures). His magnum opus has many analyses of economy, culture, language, art, demography...
In 1989 Brandt wrote a large book called Sources of Evil: Dualist Themes, where he collected many older works he had read at international or local conferences. It is a book of ideas, clearly showing the author's interest for gnostic
and dualist
currents in the history of religions
. It includes a detailed analysis of Biblical
books (Genesis, Ecclesiastes
), a careful examination of the Toltec
religion, Wycliffe
's heresy, and local heretical movements in Dalmatia
and Bosnia
, especially the phenomenon of the Bosnian Church
. As for other larger history works, there is Brandt's book on the Kievan Rus'
. All these works are characterized by a modern critical and multifaceted approach, using archeology, palaeography
, history of art and other auxiliary history disciplines.
However, Brandt had far wider interests than medieval and religious studies. As the translator of a part of Proust's
cycle In Search of Lost Time
, he showed a sensibility for literary and linguistic phenomena.
of 1967. (There are indications that Brandt personally wrote the text of the Declaration.) As the Declaration went against the Yugoslav
policy, Brandt became "undesirable": he was not given any serious punishment (neither were the other authors of the Declaration), but his field of activities was restricted.
The most important Brandt's polemical work is definitely the Anti-Memorandum, a text where he vehemently and scientifically refutes the claims of the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
, the fundamental document of the recent Greater Serbia
n ideology. Later he was the initiator of the collection Sources of Greater Serbian Aggression (1991), translated into English and French, which includes his Anti-Memorandum.
Ironically, those two influential and historically significant works (especially the Declaration), look quite anachronous today, because of their style and arguments full of communist phrases, which had to be used for such works to be published under Yugoslavia. In this respect, Miroslav Brandt had the paradoxical destiny of a political writer who had much more success than the Croatian classics in that area (Ivo Pilar
, Milan Šufflay
), but whose political works have become obsolete.
.
Brandt's claim that his bourgeois
origins, developed national consciousness
and non-communist
world view made him incompatible with the ideological framework of his profession which went against his whole being, is not easy to verify or valuate. In his memoirs, he explains why he did not deal with Croatian themes
(except marginally), instead using his erudition and interests to write about European and world history. Brandt's polemical statement that Croatian historiography under Yugoslavia purposely reduced the national element to a minimum, claiming to destroy myths and create critical historiography represented by Nada Klaić
(whom Brandt accused of being protected by the communist regime only because it considered her work ultimately destructive for the Croatian national pride) remains an intriguing and questionable proposition that is yet to be verified.
Aside from the mentioned memoirs, he wrote a novel, Triptych, where he attacked communist totalitarianism
. It is too early to estimate the future status of his works in Croatian literature. Still, even a superficial reader will notice that Brandt spent the last years of his life in resignation and pessimism. The available sources indicate that not even the creation of a sovereign Croatian state
(which he had helped prepare) managed to pull him from the lethargy and the feeling of pointlessness radiating from his autobiographic works.
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
n historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
, writer, publicist
Publicist
A publicist is a person whose job is to generate and manage publicity for a public figure, especially a celebrity, a business, or for a work such as a book, film or album...
and polymath
Polymath
A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath may simply be someone who is very knowledgeable...
. He contributed to disparate areas ranging from politics to history of religions and literary translation. His polemical works helped preserve the national identity of Croats
Croats
Croats are a South Slavic ethnic group mostly living in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and nearby countries. There are around 4 million Croats living inside Croatia and up to 4.5 million throughout the rest of the world. Responding to political, social and economic pressure, many Croats have...
under Yugoslavia.
History, religion, literature
Brandt was born in CerićCerić
Cerić is a village in eastern Croatia, located to the northeast of Vinkovci.During the Croatian War of Independence, Cerić was on the eastern front, and it was occupied by Serbian forces on October 2, 1991, to the detriment of the Croatian civilian population....
near the Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
n town of Vinkovci
Vinkovci
Vinkovci is a city in Croatia, in the Vukovar-Syrmia County. In the 2011 census, the total population of the city was 35,375, making it the largest town of the county...
. He graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Zagreb
University of Zagreb
The University of Zagreb is the biggest Croatian university and the oldest continuously operating university in the area covering Central Europe south of Vienna and all of Southeastern Europe...
in 1948, specializing in history, geography and Latin. In 1954, he obtained his Ph.D. from the same university with the thesis Development of Economic and Social Relationships in Split
Split (city)
Split is a Mediterranean city on the eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea, centered around the ancient Roman Palace of the Emperor Diocletian and its wide port bay. With a population of 178,192 citizens, and a metropolitan area numbering up to 467,899, Split is by far the largest Dalmatian city and...
until the End of the 14th century. Brandt worked as a librarian in the National and University Library in Zagreb, a curator in the Historical Museum in Zagreb, an assistant at the Historical Institute of the Academy
Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts
The Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts is the national academy of Croatia. It was founded in 1866 as the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts , and was known by that name for most of its existence.- History :...
. Finally, Brandt was a professor and vice-dean at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb for many years. He died in Zagreb.
The opus of Miroslav Brandt includes large encyclopedic works, polemics and articles, as well as literary works. The greatest work in the first category is The Medieval
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
Age of Historical Development, a monumental (around 800 pages) study presenting a detailed history of several centuries (starting from the 3rd) of European and Mediterranean history, describing the great clusters of civilizations of Western Christianity
Western Christianity
Western Christianity is a term used to include the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church and groups historically derivative thereof, including the churches of the Anglican and Protestant traditions, which share common attributes that can be traced back to their medieval heritage...
, Byzantium
Byzantium
Byzantium was an ancient Greek city, founded by Greek colonists from Megara in 667 BC and named after their king Byzas . The name Byzantium is a Latinization of the original name Byzantion...
, Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
and other Asian societies (he even included Central American cultures). His magnum opus has many analyses of economy, culture, language, art, demography...
In 1989 Brandt wrote a large book called Sources of Evil: Dualist Themes, where he collected many older works he had read at international or local conferences. It is a book of ideas, clearly showing the author's interest for gnostic
Gnosticism
Gnosticism is a scholarly term for a set of religious beliefs and spiritual practices common to early Christianity, Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism , and Neoplatonism.A common characteristic of some of these groups was the teaching that the realisation of Gnosis...
and dualist
Dualism
Dualism denotes a state of two parts. The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Dualism can refer to moral dualism, Dualism (from...
currents in the history of religions
History of religions
The history of religion refers to the written record of human religious experiences and ideas. This period of religious history begins with the invention of writing about 5,000 years ago in the Near East. The prehistory of religion relates to a study of religious beliefs that existed prior to the...
. It includes a detailed analysis of Biblical
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
books (Genesis, Ecclesiastes
Ecclesiastes
The Book of Ecclesiastes, called , is a book of the Hebrew Bible. The English name derives from the Greek translation of the Hebrew title.The main speaker in the book, identified by the name or title Qoheleth , introduces himself as "son of David, king in Jerusalem." The work consists of personal...
), a careful examination of the Toltec
Toltec
The Toltec culture is an archaeological Mesoamerican culture that dominated a state centered in Tula, Hidalgo in the early post-classic period of Mesoamerican chronology...
religion, Wycliffe
John Wycliffe
John Wycliffe was an English Scholastic philosopher, theologian, lay preacher, translator, reformer and university teacher who was known as an early dissident in the Roman Catholic Church during the 14th century. His followers were known as Lollards, a somewhat rebellious movement, which preached...
's heresy, and local heretical movements in Dalmatia
Dalmatia
Dalmatia is a historical region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. It stretches from the island of Rab in the northwest to the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. The hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers in the south....
and Bosnia
Bosnia (region)
Bosnia is a eponomous region of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It lies mainly in the Dinaric Alps, ranging to the southern borders of the Pannonian plain, with the rivers Sava and Drina marking its northern and eastern borders. The other eponomous region, the southern, other half of the country is...
, especially the phenomenon of the Bosnian Church
Bosnian Church
The Bosnian Church is historically thought to be an indigenous branch of the Bogomils that existed in Bosnia during the Middle Ages. Adherents of the church called themselves simply Krstjani...
. As for other larger history works, there is Brandt's book on the Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus'
Kievan Rus was a medieval polity in Eastern Europe, from the late 9th to the mid 13th century, when it disintegrated under the pressure of the Mongol invasion of 1237–1240....
. All these works are characterized by a modern critical and multifaceted approach, using archeology, palaeography
Palaeography
Palaeography, also spelt paleography is the study of ancient writing. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating historical manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of...
, history of art and other auxiliary history disciplines.
However, Brandt had far wider interests than medieval and religious studies. As the translator of a part of Proust's
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
cycle In Search of Lost Time
In Search of Lost Time
In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past is a novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust. His most prominent work, it is popularly known for its considerable length and the notion of involuntary memory, the most famous example being the "episode of the madeleine." The novel is widely...
, he showed a sensibility for literary and linguistic phenomena.
Fight for the Croatian cause
Considering his interest in language, it is no wonder that Brandt was one of the seven creators of the Declaration on the Status and Name of the Croatian Standard LanguageDeclaration on the Status and Name of the Croatian Standard Language
The Declaration on the Status and Name of the Croatian Literary Language was a document brought by Croat scholars. The declaration was published on March 13, 1967 in the Telegram, Yugoslav newspapers for social and cultural issues, nr. 359, 17 March 1967...
of 1967. (There are indications that Brandt personally wrote the text of the Declaration.) As the Declaration went against the Yugoslav
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...
policy, Brandt became "undesirable": he was not given any serious punishment (neither were the other authors of the Declaration), but his field of activities was restricted.
The most important Brandt's polemical work is definitely the Anti-Memorandum, a text where he vehemently and scientifically refutes the claims of the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts
The Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts was a draft document produced by a 14-member committee composed by members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts from 1985 to 1986, presided by Kosta Mihailović...
, the fundamental document of the recent Greater Serbia
Greater Serbia
The term Greater Serbia or Great Serbia applies to the Serbian nationalist and irredentist ideology directed towards the creation of a Serbian land which would incorporate all regions of traditional significance to the Serbian nation...
n ideology. Later he was the initiator of the collection Sources of Greater Serbian Aggression (1991), translated into English and French, which includes his Anti-Memorandum.
Ironically, those two influential and historically significant works (especially the Declaration), look quite anachronous today, because of their style and arguments full of communist phrases, which had to be used for such works to be published under Yugoslavia. In this respect, Miroslav Brandt had the paradoxical destiny of a political writer who had much more success than the Croatian classics in that area (Ivo Pilar
Ivo Pilar
Ivo Pilar was a Croatian historian, politician and jurist, considered the father of Croatian geopolitics. His book The South Slav Question is a seminal work on the South Slav geopolitical issues.- Early career :...
, Milan Šufflay
Milan Šufflay
Milan pl. Šufflay was a Croatian historian and politician. He was one of the founders of albanology and the author of the first Croatian science fiction novel.-Life:...
), but whose political works have become obsolete.
Autobiographical writings
In his old age Brandt turned to literature. He wrote an autobiography, Living with Contemporaries, where he paints a pessimist image of his life, with not much good to say about his colleagues historians, primarily Jaroslav Šidak and Nada KlaićNada Klaic
Nada Klaić was a Croatian historian. She was influential and controversial Croatian medievalist of the 20th century.-Academic career:...
.
Brandt's claim that his bourgeois
Bourgeoisie
In sociology and political science, bourgeoisie describes a range of groups across history. In the Western world, between the late 18th century and the present day, the bourgeoisie is a social class "characterized by their ownership of capital and their related culture." A member of the...
origins, developed national consciousness
Patriotism
Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...
and non-communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
world view made him incompatible with the ideological framework of his profession which went against his whole being, is not easy to verify or valuate. In his memoirs, he explains why he did not deal with Croatian themes
History of Croatia
Croatia first appeared as a duchy in the 7th century and then as a kingdom in the 10th century. From the 12th century it remained a distinct state with its ruler and parliament, but it obeyed the kings and emperors of various neighboring powers, primarily Hungary and Austria. The period from the...
(except marginally), instead using his erudition and interests to write about European and world history. Brandt's polemical statement that Croatian historiography under Yugoslavia purposely reduced the national element to a minimum, claiming to destroy myths and create critical historiography represented by Nada Klaić
Nada Klaic
Nada Klaić was a Croatian historian. She was influential and controversial Croatian medievalist of the 20th century.-Academic career:...
(whom Brandt accused of being protected by the communist regime only because it considered her work ultimately destructive for the Croatian national pride) remains an intriguing and questionable proposition that is yet to be verified.
Aside from the mentioned memoirs, he wrote a novel, Triptych, where he attacked communist totalitarianism
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
. It is too early to estimate the future status of his works in Croatian literature. Still, even a superficial reader will notice that Brandt spent the last years of his life in resignation and pessimism. The available sources indicate that not even the creation of a sovereign Croatian state
Croatian War of Independence
The Croatian War of Independence was fought from 1991 to 1995 between forces loyal to the government of Croatia—which had declared independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia —and the Serb-controlled Yugoslav People's Army and local Serb forces, with the JNA ending its combat...
(which he had helped prepare) managed to pull him from the lethargy and the feeling of pointlessness radiating from his autobiographic works.
History
- Razvoj privrednih i društvenih odnosa u Splitu do kraja 14. stoljeća (Development of Economic and Social Relationships in Split until the End of the 14th Century), 1954
- Srednjovjekovno doba povijesnog razvitka (The Medieval Age of Historical Development), 1980
- Izvori zla: dualističke teme (Sources of Evil: Dualist Themes), 1989
- Izvori velikosrpske agresije (Sources of Greater SerbiaGreater SerbiaThe term Greater Serbia or Great Serbia applies to the Serbian nationalist and irredentist ideology directed towards the creation of a Serbian land which would incorporate all regions of traditional significance to the Serbian nation...
n Aggression), 1991
Translations
- CombrayCombrayCombray is a commune in the Calvados department in the Basse-Normandie region in northwestern France.Combray is also an imagined village in Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu , a book which was strongly inspired by the village of his childhood, Illiers, which has now been renamed...
by Marcel ProustMarcel ProustValentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
, 1952 - Swann's Way by Marcel ProustMarcel ProustValentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust was a French novelist, critic, and essayist best known for his monumental À la recherche du temps perdu...
, 1952 - Les Thibault by Roger Martin du GardRoger Martin du GardRoger Martin du Gard was a French author and winner of the 1937 Nobel Prize for Literature. Trained as a paleographer and archivist, Martin du Gard brought to his works a spirit of objectivity and a scrupulous regard for details...
, 1953
Other
- Declaration on the Status and Name of the Croatian Standard LanguageDeclaration on the Status and Name of the Croatian Standard LanguageThe Declaration on the Status and Name of the Croatian Literary Language was a document brought by Croat scholars. The declaration was published on March 13, 1967 in the Telegram, Yugoslav newspapers for social and cultural issues, nr. 359, 17 March 1967...
, 1967, jubilee edition in 1997