Valtazar Bogišić

At the time he was already blind and told him a lot of folk stories as well as about his adventures on the sea, traveling, meeting important people like Miloš Obrenović, and authorized his grandson to run his errands and even simple court cases.Intrigues about the inheritance and family business followed but after two years Bogišić managed to get the papers in order and recuperate what the cousins had taken.He was reading in Vienna, Berlin, Munich and Paris with many notable professors like Franz Bopp, the founder of comparative linguistics, Prussian historian Johann Gustav Droysen, Franz Miklosich, one of the most famous Slavic philologists, the founder of sociology Lorenz von Stein and many famous lawyers such as Theodor Mommsen, Rudolf von Jhering and few notable members of German Historical School of Law.He obtained a Phd in Philosophy in Giessen in 1862, defending the thesis entitled "On Causes of Defeat of the Prussian Army in Hussite War".Bogišić participated in the foundation of the club named Slovanska beseda which was, at first, a gathering all Slavs from around the Empire and was later reorganized into a Czech-club.The organization pleaded for the real unification of Serbs and Croats into a single Yugoslav nation and not only their formal common political actions, which was the idea of Yugoslavia for many Croatian intellectuals.As early as 1866, he conducted in all the regions of the Balkans a sociological inquiry with many questions concerning the forms of landed property in the country, the social structure of the village, customs, institutions and family community, etc.In his publication "Slovenski Muzeum", he responded to the "Slavofobs" of the day, who argued that Slavic peoples had to develop on their own, like the Germanic or Romanic nations had previously.In 1867/68, after the years spent at the Court Library, Bogišić entered the Austro-Hungarian Ministry of Defence, and was named Councilor for Education in the Austrian Military Frontier based in Temesvar in the Banat.The Austrian press wrote that Bogišić "being a Serb was called to Odessa only due to panslavic respect"[7] and in reality he was not welcomed in Russia.He officially remained a professor of the Odessa University but already in 1873, following the orders of the czar, as a Russian subject, he left for Montenegro with a task to codify private law.Based on the questionnaires, he published a Collection of legal customs of the south Slavs ("Zbornik sadašnjih pravnih običaja u južnih Slovena I, Građa u odgovorima iz različnih krajeva slovneskoga juga") in 1874.His draft constitution for Herzegovina from 1875, favors basic rights especially the ones pertaining to equality, and is written in the best Republican and liberal tradition thus reflecting the spirit of the local people as well as Bogišić's convictions from his youth.With a good eye for the social condition and needs, he managed to transform political ideals into a legal text acceptable for a common man.During his work on the General Property Code, besides legal customs Bogišić considered well-established institutions of Roman Law.Most Yugoslav laws, given that they were written in Belgrade in the institutional frameworks previously established in the Kingdom of Serbia, belong to this legal-language tradition.Bogišić chose the Serbian capital Belgrade, fearing that his rich scientific collection might otherwise end up in Austrian hands, who had a hostile attitude toward Slavic culture back in the days before the First World War.18,000 books including many rare antiques; 10,000 letters; various notes; ethnological and numismatic collections were kept in Cavtat in inadequate conditions for years.