JAGODA TRUHELKA (1864 – 1957) Two great women writers marked the first half of the 20th century in Croatia: Ivana Brlić Mažuranić and Jagoda Truhelka. Jagoda Truhelka, however, living almost hundred years and thirty years longer than Ivana Brlić Mažuranić, managed to publish even as early as in the 19th century, and also in the second half of the 20th century. She was born on 5th February 1864 in Osijek, and died on 17th December 1957 in Zagreb. Her father was Czech and mother Hungarian German. In her family the atmosphere was intellectual and the children–Jagoda and two brothers – were encouraged in their educational and spiritual development. Jagoda’s brother Ćiro was a famous archaeologist, with great merits for the history and culture of Croatia and especially of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Father’s early death particularly stuck Jagoda, who got sick of sorrow. Like her father, she dedicated herself very successfully to educational work, changing places of work – Osijek, Zagreb, Gospić, Banja Luka, Sarajevo, again Zagreb… Her work was noted and awarded by a successful career. She was an educator at the edge of time and considered educating a compassionate, solidarity showing heart a key for all life achievements and to achieve that purpose concentrated on language, literature, but also on music and figurative art. In her opinion basic condition for good results in education is self-control of the educator; the example of conquering one’s own self she appreciated more than any other didactic means or methods. Her focus was on direct, human relationship between pupil and teacher and that is the reason why in this aspect she was often compared to Maria Montessori, who at that time revolutionised European educational system.
AUGUST HARAMBAŠIĆ (1861 – 1911) August Harambašić, talented Croatian patriotic poet and politician, member of the Croatian Party of Rights, was very early confronted with the heavy burden of the political context of his time. His ardent patriotic verses and political speeches made the whole nation enthusiastic, but toward the end of his life he experienced the total breakdown of his youth ideals and died alone and forgotten in the Psychiatric Hospital Stenjevac. August Harambašić was born on 14 July 1861 in Donji Miholjac. Having lost his mother in his early childhood and his father at the age of 15, he continues his life and elementary school in Nova Gradiška, living with his grandfather. He attends Gymnasium in Požega and Osijek and studies legal sciences in Zagreb and Vienna, takes his doctor degree in 1892, passes in 1894 his judicial trainee and in 1896 also his bar examination. He receives the Certificate in Legal Practice in 1900 and that same year is elected Secretary to the Croatian Writers’ Association. From 1894 he worked for some time in the law office of J. Frank, and in 1895 defended students who burnt Hungarian flag in Zagreb. Because of his political and artistic work he had been arrested on several occasions. At the end of 1880-ies, when the youth of the Croatian Party of Rights became an eager exponent of party’s ideas he joined the Party and became its spokesman. After the split in the Party of Rights in 1895 he sided with the mainstream of the party, i.e. patriots, although he advocated the unification of the Party. He took part in the work of parliament members committee from Croatia and Dalmatia, who elaborated a study on which the Rijeka Resolution was founded. After founding of the Croatian-Serbian Coalition he followed its political orientation, and his actions testify about a delicate position of the members of the Party of Rights within the Coalition. Pointing out the need to positively work on the basis of the Croatian -Hungarian Agreement, he advocated the constitutional reform and above all secret, direct and equal voting right and the unification of Dalmatia and Croatia. At the beginning of 1909 he dropped out of the Croatian Party of Rights and from the Croatian-Serbian Coalition, and the Ban P. Rauch appointed him that same year a Secretary to the Provincial Government in the Department for Religion and Education. He wrote poems, poetic stories, satires, librettos, feuilletons and literary and art criticism. His first poem Na što pjesni? (Why Poetry?) was published in Smilje in 1877. The majority of poems that ensured him the status of the leading Croatian poet were written by 1902 (Ružmarinke - Rosemary Poems 1882, Slobodarke - Free Poems 1883, Sitne pjesme - Miniature Poems 1884, Tugomilke – Sad Poems 1887 and Nevenke - Marigold Poems 1892, Pjesničke pripoviesti – Poetic Stories 1889 and Izabrane pjesme – Sellected Poems, 1895).
GRIGOR VITEZ (1911– 1966) Grigor Vitez is the first modern Croatian children’s poet, author of six poetry collections and a book of children’s stories, editor of children’s books and periodicals, translator, teacher, educator and literary thinker. He initiated and edited three children and youth library series (Vesela družba, Biblioteka Vjeverica, Biblioteka Jelen) and two children periodicals (Pionir, Radost), he wrote program studies about child, childhood and literature in the context of childhood and in his literary and publisher’s work strongly advocated humanity, reason and justice against tyranny, heartlessness and oppression. Grigor Vitez was born on15 February 1911 in Slavonic village Kosovac near Nova Gradiška. He finished elementary school in Okučani, middle and Teacher Education School in Nova Gradiška and Pakrac. At early age he began to create poems, but several initial failures (whereof very suggestively and wittyly writes his daughter Olga Vitez Babić in his biographic notes) almost discouraged him from further writing poetry. Having finished Teacher Education School he began to work as teacher in Slobodna Vlast near Đakovo, and then also in Voćin and Golinci near Orahovica, where he joined the National Liberation War. After the war he changed his teaching job and got a position in the Ministry of Education as Head of the Education Department. Though, the vocation of poetry prevailed and in 1956 he published his first collection of children’s poetry Prepelica (Quail), today considered a turning point in Croatian poetry for children, actually the beginning and the focus of modern children’s poetry. In poetry collections that followed, Sto vukova (Hundreds of Woolves, 1957), Kad bi drveće hodalo ( If trees could walk 1959), Iza brda plava (Behind the hill, blue 1961), Hvatajte lopova (Catch the Thief 1964), Gdje priče rastu (Where Stories Grow, 1965) and Igra se nastavlja (The Play Goes On 1966), his poetic expression and language playfulness became more perfect and he created quite new poetics based on language games, number nursery rhymes, nonsense spoken poetry and later on landscape as an independent theme, on productive relationship between child and animal and on the affirmation of new educational science with the child in focus.
