Bogisic, Balthazar

Balthazar Bogisic was born on December 20, 1834 in the small town of Cavtat , at the junction of the Serbo-Croatian historical regions of Travunia and Dalmatia , into a wealthy Catholic merchant family. His mother died in childbirth, and his father, Vlakho Bogisic, wanted Balthazar to continue his family business, so he did not seek to give his son a broad education. Since childhood, different versatile abilities, Bogisic went to school at four years old and still finished it ahead of schedule. By the age of eleven, being four to five years younger than fellow students, he graduated from a two-year nautical school, which was led by the local rebar A. Kazijarija. A very great influence on the young Balthazar was made by his grandfather, who told him folk tales and songs, stories about his sea adventures and bought many books, and after his death left his grandson a significant inheritance. After much persuasion, Bogishich’s father nevertheless agreed to receive his four-year education at the gymnasium, but with the condition not to pass final exams and not to continue further education. Bogisic, by this time already fluent in Italian, began to intensively study the German language, and at the end of the gymnasium course, contrary to the will of his father, he still passed the exams.

In 1856, his father died, after which his business, due to intrigue, was first transferred to the cousins ​​of Balthazar, but after a two-year process, he was able to regain his entire inheritance. Having money, in 1858 he went to study first in Padua and then in Venice, where he studied Italian language and literature and became interested in the Italian national movement.

After completing his education in Venice, Bogisic received a scholarship from the Austrian government, which gives the right to study at Austrian and foreign universities. He studied in Vienna, Berlin , Munich and Paris , studied philosophy, philology, law and political economy. Among his teachers were many prominent scientists of the time. During his studies, Bogisic also established his first contacts with the Pan-Slavic (Pan-Slavic) movement. He received a Ph.D. in Hesse in 1862 for a study analyzing the causes of the defeat of the German armies in the war against the Czech Hussites, and in 1865 in Vienna Bogisic passed an oral examination for a doctor of law, although by that time he was already conducting legal practice.

In 1863, he was appointed to the Vienna State Library to head the Slavic and its legal departments. In this position, he studied various historical documents, collected samples of Serbian folk poetry, wrote his first works on the history of law and actively participated in the public pan-Slavic movement, supporting, in particular, the Union of Serbian Youth (Ujedinjena omladina srpska). In 1868, Bogisic went to work in the Austrian Ministry of War, becoming an adviser on the education of the Banat-Srem military border (he lived in Temeshvar , then in Petrovaradin ), but his attempts at school reform were unsuccessful.

In 1869, he was invited to the Russian Empire, accepting her citizenship and becoming a civil servant. Bogishich refused to teach in Kiev or Warsaw, but agreed to take a professor’s place at the newly created Novorossiysk (Odessa) University, where he delivered his first lecture in 1870. In Odessa, he founded the Slavic Library and published a program article "On the scientific development of the history of Slavic law."

- emphasized Bogisic. For a number of reasons, Bogisic was extremely unpopular among students: already in 1871, mass protests began against him, and he taught without enthusiasm. When his request for early resignation was not satisfied, he began to try to spend as much time as possible on scientific trips in Russia and, in particular, intensively studied legal customs in the Caucasus . In 1872, Bogishich visited Abkhazia , Samurzakan , Mingrelia and Svaneti , familiarizing himself with the lifestyle of the peoples there.

- testified in 1911 the New Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron.

In the end, Bogisic was removed from teaching at Novorossiysk University in 1873, but remained a subject of Russia and, on the orders of Emperor Alexander II, was sent to Montenegro to promote the codification of private law there.

By the time he arrived in Montenegro, the Civil Code of this country was basically prepared - however, Bogisic managed to convince Prince Nicholas I that work on the codification would take many more years, and began collecting information on the legal customs of Montenegro, as well as neighboring Herzegovina and Albania . The result of his work was the release in 1874 of a collection of legal customs of the southern Slavs, but he was not satisfied with this and continued to collect information on the customs of private and public law.

- wrote the venerable civilist.

During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 Bogisic was seconded to the Russian Civil Chancellery, which was entrusted with the formation of the judiciary in Bulgaria, liberated from the Ottoman yoke.

In 1888, Bogisic completed many years of work on the Montenegrin Civil Code. In 1890, having received a pension from the Russian government, Bogisic moved to Paris. In 1893-1899. was Minister of Justice of Montenegro, continuing to make improvements to the Code. The second revised edition of the Codex was published in 1899.

- wrote the New Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron.

Then Bogisic again settled in Paris, and lived there as a private person. In Paris, he dealt with many other matters, including writing a constitution for Serbian revolutionaries in Herzegovina , preparing state and legal documents for Bulgaria, which had recently received de facto independence from the Ottoman Empire, collected and partially published documents on the history of Serbian uprisings of 1804-1813, as well as doing research in the field of sociological and historical aspects of the family and family and inheritance law, which he considered separate, not related to civil law and as a result did not include them in the Civil Code of Montenegro ... In 1902 Valtazar Bogišić in 1902 was elected president of the International Institute of Sociology in Paris, he was considered a respected scientist, a lawyer who visited the students from different countries. He died in 1908 in Rijeka (Fiume) , on the way to his native Cavtat.

• "Ueber die Ursachen der Niederlagen des deutschen Heeres im hussitischen Kriege" (dissertation, Giessen, 1862),
• “Pravni običaji u Slovena” (Zagreb, 1867),
• “Naputak za sabiranje pravnih običaja, koji živu u narodu” (Zagreb, 1866),
• "Zbornik sadasnjiti pravnih obicaja u juznih slovena" (Zagreb, 1874);
• “Folk pjesme, from the old, better than the seaside record” (part 1, Belgrade, 1878),
• "Pisani zakoni na slovenskom jugu" (Zagreb, 1872, bibliogr. Essay),
• “On the scientific development of the history of Slavic law” (St. Petersburg, 1870, of 6 No. “Dawn”);
• “Aperçu de travaux sur le droit coutumier en Russie” (Paris, 1879);
• "Sur la forme dite inokosna de la famille rurale chez les Serbes et les Croates" (Paris, 1884),
• “On a simple rural family among Serbs and Croats” "ZhMNP", 1885, February.
• “Quelques mots sur les principes et la méthode suivis dans la codification dn droit civil au Monténégro” (Paris, 1888 ^[5] ).

• Yanovsky A.E. Bogishich, Balthasar // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• Surja Pupovci, Valtazar Bogišić u svetlu dokumenata iz ruskih arhiva, 1996.
• Surja Pupovci, Valtazar Bogišić, Podgorica 2004.