Viktor Novak
Viktor Novak ( Serbian Cyrillic Виктор Новак; born February 4, 1889 in Donja Stubica, Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia, Austria - Hungary, † January 1, 1977 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia ) was a former Roman Catholic priest, who later became Freemasons and Yugoslav historians Croatian descent.
Among numerous writings the book Magnum Crimen is his most noted.
Career
Novak was a university professor of history of Croatia in Belgrade. In the period between the two world wars, he was a proponent of a centralized Yugoslavianism under the Serbian royal house and tried to justify it scientifically. Shortly after the introduction of the Yugoslav royal dictatorship Novak tried in his designs for the Government Printing Office, official -looking font Jugoslovenska misao ( The Yugoslav mission) with one-sided collated documents " in a new Yugoslav nationalism to melt tribal nationalism " and wrote that:
" The age of the Yugoslav idea is to be equated with the age of the Slavs in the Balkans. "
The work also includes a faksimiliertes Message from the dictatorial ruling Yugoslav king Alexander I.
After the Balkan campaign (1941 ) and the destruction of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, he supported the so-called Serbian " government of national salvation " under Milan Nedić, which collaborated with the Nazi German Reich. So Novak was in 1941 as a university professor one of the signatories of the " Appeal to the Serbian people " ( Apel srpskom Narodu ). This called, among other things, the Serbs to support the German occupation authorities and the Quisling government under Nedić to obtain the Serbian people. Novak's signature stood on top after he signed as 90th of 546 persons in public life in Serbia, namely leading representatives of the clergy, the education and the economy, the appeal. However, he had also been briefly detained in 1941 along with 32 other professors of the University of Belgrade, by the rulers as hostages in the concentration camp Banjica.
As a proponent of Yugoslavianism Novak was allowed to continue his teaching and publication activities even after the Second World War in a communist Yugoslavia, had his theories, but adapted to the official view of the Communist Party.
As a leading Freemason Yugoslavia and brief Grandmaster of the Masonic " Great Yugoslavia " - what his views influenced strongly - is asked Novak "in the name of the Yugoslavian Freemasonry " and the "interest of the Freemasons around the world to the action of the Yugoslav Communists against Monsignor Stepinac ", which also includes the political show trial against this Archbishop of Zagreb in 1946 belonged.
In 1967, Novak appeared in opposition to the declaration of the name and position of the Croatian literary language, which largely caused the Croatian Spring, with his book Vuk i Hrvati ( Vuk and the Croats ). It Novak calculated from polemical and with little scientific value with the scientists wanted to share the point of view of the language- nationalist Serbian philologist Vuk Stefanović Karadžić ( 1787-1864 ). Novak defamed is unjustified some Croatian philologists as a precursor or servant of the fascist Independent State of Croatia, which existed from 1941 to 1945. A contemporary book review in Yugoslavia described the work as " Viktor Novak's latest provocation ".
Awards
- St. Sava Order, III. , IV and V class
- Serbia award of July 7 (1960 )
- Order of the work with the Red Flag (1961 )
- Medal for national merit (1964 )