Milan Marjanović

Milan Marjanović (12 May 1879 – 21 December 1955) was a Croatian and Yugoslavian writer, literary critic and filmmaker. He joined the Croat-Serb Progressive Youth, part of the Croat-Serb Coalition, and by 1903, became one of its leading members. In 1912, he broke with the organisation and joined the Yugoslav Nationalist Youth, viewing integral Yugoslavism as the only way to politically unite the South Slavs. After the outbreak of World War I, he fled to Paris where he joined the Yugoslav Committee and worked at the mission of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later renamed Yugoslavia) at the Paris Peace Conference. In the Interwar Period, Marjanović travelled to the United States, organising exhibitions of works of sculptor Ivan Meštrović and attending a course in photography and film directing in New York. He returned to Zagreb, then moved to Belgrade until retirement. During the World War II, he was arrested and imprisoned by Fascist Italy in 1942–1943. In 1944, he joined the Yugoslav Partisans' mission in Bari. He became a full member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Marjanović influenced the ideology of Yugoslav nationalism and the Yugoslav Nationalist Youth. He introduced the idea of a unified Serbo-Croatian nation. Marjanović claimed that the Ottoman conquests in Europe both destroyed medieval South Slavic kingdoms and stopped ethnogenesis of separate South Slavic nations. The same ideology was subsequently adopted by the pro-regime Organization of Yugoslav Nationalists founded shortly after establishment of Yugoslavia.

By 1914, Marjanović had published more than 400 literary reviews. A significant portion of Marjanović's writing dealt with the works of Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević, Ante Kovačić, and Vladimir Nazor. Marjanović published a literary review deemed the first history of literary realism in Croatian literature. He also wrote plays, a novel and a series of political and literary-culture articles. He also published a series of works on occult topics and history, including the Adriatic question. Marjanović wrote screenplays and directed documentary films and an early Croatian animated film. Provided by Wikipedia