Location

• Roma Via Tomacelli 129, Italy 00186
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Languages

• Croatian
• English
• Italian
• Spanish

Name of collection

• Augustin Juretić Collection

Provenance and cultural activities

• The Augustin Juretić Collection (personal archival fund) held in the Pontifical Croatian College of St. Jerome in Rome was created during Juretić's life as an émigré from 1942 to 1954. After Juretić’s death in 1954, the materials were, through his friend Msgr. Pavao Jesih, transferred from Fribourg to Rome and deposited with the College. As Juretić was a very prolific author, it is assumed that his collection (fund) is incomplete and that the rest of the materials went to Adil Zulfikarpašić, who, together with Jesih, continued to publish Juretić's magazine Hrvatski dom (Croatian Home). However, Zulfikarpašić denied that the materials were in his possession, and the Bosniak Institute in Sarajevo, which Zulfikarpašić founded and where all the materials he had collected in his life are kept, also denied the existence of these materials. Reverend Andrija Lukinović was the first to organize Juretić’s legacy into boxes and do a summary inventory, and in 2017 and 2018 Ivan Balta processed the materials in an archival manner and conducted a complete inventory.

  The collection consists of Juretić's correspondence with Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac, Reverend Georgij Rožman, Pavle Tijan, Dinko Tomašić, Ivo Omrčanin and numerous other public figures of that time. The collection also contains issues of the magazine Hrvatski dom, Juretić's notes and handwritten texts, such as, for example, “Maček and the HSS (Croatian Peasant Party) during the war and today,” “Mission with General Mihailović,” and “Who Tito has in the country.” There are also various declarations from World War II, and the “Agreement between the Yugoslav Royal Government and the National Liberation Committee” signed by Ivan Šubašić and Josip Broz Tito. News clippings about Yugoslavia from the foreign media and the media in the Independent State of Croatia, or NDH (such as Novi list), and expatriate periodicals are also included. A large part of the collection consists of documents by the International Peasants' Union.

  At the time of World War II, Augustin Juretić collected oral and written information from the NDH and forwarded it to associates in the Allied countries. After the war, Juretić gathered information from communist Yugoslavia. He sought out various types of data, from the prices of food and clothing to songs about Tito and the communist regime. Juretić later published this information in the magazine Hrvatski dom. The information published in Hrvatski dom was further disseminated by numerous Croatian expatriate newspapers as well as the international media. Juretić also managed the Hrvatski dom Croatian Press Service, through which he maintained connections with foreign newspapers and Catholic news agencies in various parts of the world. He provided news for 15 foreign newspapers and news agencies, and he had particularly good cooperation with Catholic newspaper agencies in Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland (Hrvatski dom, June 1953, 13). Foreign media, apart from distributing what was written in Hrvatski dom, often contacted Juretić for additional information or information they thought Juretić might have but had not been published in Hrvatski dom (Hrvatski dom, February 1953, 8).

  Ivan Balta notes that Msgr. Juretić was “a person whom Stepinac trusted greatly and he belonged to a circle of people whose life and work was a sort of cultural opposition to the totalitarian communist regime” (Balta, interview, November 5, 2018). In his writing, Juretić opposed the totalitarian regime established on the territory of Croatia and Yugoslavia and advocated an independent Croatian state based on the Christian tradition and democratic principles. He believed that only the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) and its chairman, Vladko Maček, had electoral legitimacy, and that after the collapse of totalitarianism, and on the basis of this legitimacy, the HSS should temporarily assume power until democratic elections could be held to let the people to whom they would entrust their government.

Description of content

• The Augustin Juretić Collection (personal archives) in the Pontifical Croatian College of St. Jerome in Rome consists of 15 archival boxes, which is 1.5 linear meters of material. The collection is divided into three basic units: 1. Personal Documents and Records, 2. Correspondence, 3. Work and Activities. The materials from the Correspondence unit pertain to Juretić's correspondence with various organizations and individuals. The most complex unit is Work and Activities, consisting of Juretić's work related to Hrvatski dom, the International Peasants’ Union and other organizations; discussions and articles; and newspaper clippings from the foreign and expatriate press.

Content

• grey literature (regular archival documents such as brochures, bulletins, leaflets, reports, intelligence files, records, working papers, meeting minutes): 500-999
• publications (books, newspapers, articles, press clippings): 100-499

Operator(s)

• Pontifical Croatian College of the St. Jerome

Owner(s)

• Juretić, Augustin
• Pontifical Croatian College of the St. Jerome

Stakeholder(s) of the collection

• Balta, Ivan

Geographical scope of recent operation

• international

Topics

• democratic opposition
• emigration/exile

Founder(s)

• Juretić, Augustin

Date of founding

• 1942

Place of founding

• Roma Via Tomacelli 129, Italy
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Creator(s) of content

• Juretić, Augustin

Collector(s)

• Juretić, Augustin

Important events in the history of the collection

• Donation of the Augustin Juretić Collection to the Pontifical Croatian College of St. Jerome, 1954.

Featured items

• Juretić, Augustin. “Suština sukoba Kominform – Tito” [The essence of the Cominform conflict – Tito] (Hrvatski dom), 1950. Article
• Čengić, Aziz. National policies of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in the light of the Croatian people's struggle for independence, 1950. Article

Access type

• visits by appointments

Publications

• Hrvatski dom (Croatian Home), Fribourg (Switzerland), 1947. – 1954.

  Liburnicus, Georgius. Tito perseguidor (Tito the Persecutor), Madrid: Marto, 1952.

  Mlinarić, Bruno. Tito der rote Rebell und seine “Vollkommene Demokratie”, (Tito the red rebel and his "perfect democracy"), Zürich: Thomas - Verlag, 1948.  

Author(s) of this page

• Bencetić, Lidija

References

1. "Augustin Juretić." In Hrvatski biografski leksikon, 6th ed., 598-599. Zagreb: Leksikografski zavod Miroslav Krleža, 2005.

2. Bencetić, Lidija. ˝Mons. Augustin Juretić – djelovanje u emigraciji kroz bilten Hrvatski dom˝,  Časopis za suvremenu povijest 45, no. 3 (2013), 461-484.

3. Glas sv. Antuna (Buenos Aires). "Georgius Liburnicüs. Prigodom smrti mons. dra Augustina Juretića." August 12, 1954, 1.

4. Glas sv. Antuna (Buenos Aires). "Orač i Sijač na Narodnoj Njivi. Uz četrdesetu godišnjicu misništva odličnoga Božjega i hrvatskoga svećenika Mons. dra Augustina Juretića", July 29, 1954, 4, 8.

5. Kušan, Jakša. Bitka za Novu Hrvatsku, Rijeka: Otokar Keršovani, 2000.

6. Strčić, Petar. "Prilog za biografiju monsinjora dr. Augustina Juretića (1890.-1954.)." Grobnički Zbornik 7, no. 5 (1998), 321-329.

7. Šuljak, Dinko. "Moja dopuna „Mrvice iz davnih krvavih godina“." Hrvatska revija, no. 2 (September 1980), 319-320. 

Balta, Ivan, interview by Bencetić, Lidija , November 05, 2018. COURAGE Registry Oral History Collection