Ivo Pilar - Early Career

Early Career

Pilar was born in Zagreb, where he graduated from high school. He completed the studies in law in Vienna and attended lectures at the prestigious Ecole de Droit in Paris. He was one of the ideologues of the Croatian modernism and belonged to the group of the Croatian writers led by Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević after 1900.

He went from Paris back to Vienna, where he worked as a secretary in an ironworks corporation. Then he left for Sarajevo, where he was the secretary of the National Bank. He published essays and articles in Kranjčević's Nada and literary magazines in Zagreb, where he was employed at the Royal Court Table. In 1905 he went to Tuzla and opened his own legal practice. He stayed in Tuzla till 1920 and developed strong legal and Croatian patriotic activities. As he studied the conditions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially the position of the Croatian people, he actively engaged in politics, believing that Croats should be more forceful in defending their interests in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He published the brochure Josip Štadler and the Croat People's Union (Sarajevo, 1908), which was opposed by the clergy and provoked a political rift between him and the Archbishop of Vrhbosna. In his brochure, Pilar concluded that the Catholic faith had undoubtedly an exceptional role in preserving the national identity of Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but he believed there were certain differences between the interests of the people and the Church as an organisation. In 1910 he founded the Croat People's Union, trying to politically awaken impassive Croatian Catholics and prepare them for the incoming portentous events. When World War I started, he was still in Tuzla.

While many Croats eagerly awaited the dissolution of the hated Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, Pilar warned that it was the only guarantee for a Croatian identity and that the country had to be reformed, but not destroyed. He published the essay World War and the Croats. An Attempt to Orient the Croatian People Even Before the War Ends in Zagreb in 1915, under the pseudonym dr. Jurčić. He was convinced that the Croatian political elite was lost in the contemporary events and that it was letting the Serbs take the initiative, instead of clearly formulating the goals and the program of the fight of the Croatian people in the world war. The essay was recognized by well-informed readership, so there was a second edition in 1917.

The developments in the Transleithanian part of the Monarchy were going against Pilar's wishes and beliefs, so he published a booklet of 32 pages in Sarajevo in 1918. It was called Political Geography of the Croatian Lands. A Geopolitical Study and it was the founding stone of Croatian geopolitics. Pilar was aware of its historical significance, since he said: We do not have any knowledge of any work on political geography of this kind in Croatian literature. (...) Therefore, this essay is the first of its kind in this area of our literature. In the essay, Pilar pointed out that the Croatian lands since 1908, i.e. since the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, were incorporated in a single strong state, which guaranteed Croatian survival and where "today's Croatian lands flourish like never before".