On 21 November 2018, the last of a series of official ceremonies, Croatia and Slovakia, vol. 2 took place at Zahreb University. Its agenda included the ceremonial launch of the SCCH.
Therefore, the Declaration on the Establishment of the Slovak-Croatian Commission for the Humanities can be considered the baptismal letter of the commission. The Ambassador of the Slovak Republic to the Republic of Croatia, Peter Susko, read it in the Rector’s Hall at the University of Zagreb on 21 November 2018, exactly at 11:15 am. Its final words are:
“One hundred years after the disintegration of Austria-Hungary, in a common Central European framework as an integral part of the European Union, a commission of six Slovak and six Croatian members has been formed with the aim to initiate and coordinate scientific and research activities in the area of History, Linguistics, Neo-Latin Studies, History of Art, Ethnology and Archeology. On this day, the Slovak-Croatian Commission for Humanities has been launched. We wish it plenty of success in its future activities.” 1Author’s archive. See SCCH webpage (under construction).
Therefore, 21 November 2018 at 11:15 am can be regarded as the day and hour from which the SCCH counts its existence.
After the official ceremony in Zagreb launching the book Croatia and Slovakia, vol. 2 and declaring the official establishment of the SCCH, the Rectors of the University of Zagreb, Damir Boras, and the Rector of Comenius University in Bratislava, Karol Mičieta, met in the office of the Rector of the University of Zagreb. The meeting was also attended by Branislav Slyško, Press Secretary of Comenius University, Željko Holjevac, from the Department of History at the University of Zagreb, Martin Homza, Head of the Department of Slovak History at Comenius University, and Andrej Vrteľ, the future secretary of the Slovak part of the commission. Slovakia’s Ministry of Education was represented by Martina Štiffelová. During the meeting, Comenius University Rector, Karol Mičieta, said among other things:
“With Croatia we have in common over 800 years being part of the same state, the Kingdom of Hungary, as well as the tradition of a common policy in the revolutions of 1848 and within the Little Entente following 1918. Now we are members of a common European family. Slovakia has continuously supported the European integration ambitions of Croatia. As a matter of fact, it is no coincidence that the Slovak Republic was the first member state to ratify the Accession Treaty of Croatia with the European Union on 1 February 2012.”11 [11 2See Slyško, Branislav: Rektor UK prof. Karol Mičieta na Univerzite v Záhrebe. See more]
After this meeting, things gathered momentum. On 28 November 2019, Željko Hojevac, new director of the Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences in Zagreb, was appointed Head of the Commission in the area of History, Zrinka Kovačevič in Literature and Language, Mirijana Repanić Braun in Theory of Art, Maja Matasović in NeoLatin Studies, Krešimir Filipec in Archeology, and Jadranka Grbić Jakopović in Ethnology. Zrinka Kovačević was appointed Secretary of the Croatian team. In December of 2018, Martina Lubyová, Slovak Minister of Education, Science and Research, signed the decrees appointing the commission members for Slovakia.
Almost 10 years passed from the moment the initiative was first presented until it became true. However, the new legal situation in which the commission found itself corresponds to the new quality of the preparations for the first commission meeting. This took place on 17 – 19 June 2019 in the Scientific Council Hall at Comenius University in Bratislava. It consisted of two parts: a public one and a non-public one. At the beginning of the public part, which counted with the presence of high state and university representatives, the State Secretary of the Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sports of the Slovak Republic, Olga Nachtmanová, ceremoniously handed over the decrees to the members of the Slovak SCCH team.
Croatian Ambassador to Slovakia, Aleksandar Hein, was present when the relevant membership decrees were handed over to Martin Homza, Head of the Commission for Slovakia, to Andrej Vrteľ, Secretary of the Commission, as well as to Ivan Gerát, Miroslav Dudok, Marta Botíková, and Svorad Zavarský in the fields of History, Archeology, Theory of Art, Literature and Language, Ethnology and Neo-Latin Studies, respectively.
After this official ceremony, the new chairman of the Croatian SCCH team, Željko Holjevac, moderated the first part of the scientific conference on Slovakia and Croatia on the Road to Independence: History and Perspectives. The contributions presented within the public part of the meeting are contained in the first volume of Studia Carpathico-Adriatica. For this reason, they are not addressed here any further.
The contents of the second, non-public, part of SCCH’s first gathering are included in the minutes of this meeting and, together with other important documents and material, will be available on the Commission’s website, which is currently under construction. The open and accessible character of the commission’s work to the public shall be ensured by the SCCH Facebook page administered in line with the best traditions of the coexistence of all Danubian nations. It will have three language versions, namely Slovak, Croatian and the New Latin, i.e. English. This is with the aim to prevent the SCCH from getting stuck in academic rigidity. Instead, it wants to remain open to all types of external stimuli so that it can reflect the current needs of the people of Slovakia and Croatia who, like the initiators of this new humanist platform in Central Europe, keep wondering why things around us are the way they are. Slovaks and Croats lived in one kingdom for over eight hundred years. Croatia joined the European Union on 1 July 2013. Since then we have again shared one common state. Therefore, the goal of the SCCH remains to make the cultural heritage of both nations as accessible as possible not only to each other, but also to offer to the wide European market of historical cultural values the widest possible amount of quality products from our rich SlovakCroatian past. I am confident no one doubts that both nations have a lot to offer, not only to Europe but also to the whole world.
Source: Martin Homza: „A Few Words on the Establishment of the Slovak-Croatian Commission for Humanities“, Studia Carpathico-Adriatica, Vol. I, 2020, p. 12-19.
- 1Author’s archive. See SCCH webpage (under construction).
- 2See Slyško, Branislav: Rektor UK prof. Karol Mičieta na Univerzite v Záhrebe. See more