COURAGE

connecting collections

In a letter dated November 11, 1989, Alenka Bizjak addressed the editorial board of Mladina in Ljubljana as a reaction to the article ˝Notice Before Expulsion˝ (Slo. “Opomin pred izključitvijo”) by Vlado Miheljak published in the magazine. In the article, Bizjak and the Greens were accused of "ecofascism." In her letter, Bizjak asked the editorial board of Mladina to publish her response to the charges of "ecofascism" and to the disrespect for the activity of the Greens political party that was founded a few days earlier. Bizjak signed the letter as chairwoman of the Greens of Ljubljana. Bizjak expressed her disagreement with the state of society, which was also manifested in media attacks on the then newly-formed democratic opposition, in the following words: "The basic functioning and engagement of the Greens of Slovenia is primarily directed toward issues of human survival in this poor country of ours and the basic prerequisite for their success is a truly democratic and legal state."

In this letter of April 3, 1952, the archbishop of Zagreb, Alojzije Stepinac (1898-1960), who was at the time under house arrest in Krašić, after being transferred therefrom Lepoglava prison, expressed his sympathy to Bishop Vovk after the brutal attack on him in Novo Mesto which resulted in his burning. Stepinac expressed uncertainty as to whether his first letter had reached Vovk. The archbishop of Zagreb encouraged Bishop Vovk to see the positive effects of such a savage attack on one of its bishops for the Catholic Church and also took the opportunity to comment on various Slovenian people, a sociologist whose work he read, a bishop whose visit he received and nuns who were under his care. 

The letter reflects the solidarity between the two persecuted men, Stepinac and Vovk, and network they maintained. The letter shows that if the authorities knew about it, the letter would have been confiscated. Now the letter is available to the public and curator of the collection sees it as an example of how a prominent member of opposition to the regime, Stepinac, saw Bishop Vovk as a new symbol of opposition. The letter is preserved in the Anton Vovk Collection, in box number 77. It is freely accessible to the public.      

In a letter addressed to Nikolić from Rome on 21 January 1956, Lukas granted his approval to him to continue to publish Croatian Review, the most important Croatian political émigré periodical. Filip Lukas was the president of the most prominent cultural and literary institution, Matica hrvatska, from 1928 to 1945, but afterward he had to flee to Italy. Matica hrvatska printed this periodical from 1928 to 1945, but the new editorial board appointed by communists ceased publication. Nikolić respected the president of Matica in exile, and therefore asked him to use the name of Zagreb's Croatian Review. Lukas permitted him to continue to publish it, but only under one condition: that it would return to the homeland when Croatia freed itself of communist rule, in order to maintain the continuity of activity of the journal at home and in exile.

The letter was drafted in the context of press attacks against and persecution of Hans Otto Roth by the communist authorities after the establishment of the Petru Groza government in March 1945. These measures culminated in July 1948, when Roth was arrested and investigated for political reasons for six months along with other leaders of the German community in Romania involved in managing the General Savings Bank of Sibiu (Hermannstädter Allgemeinen Sparkasse) for his alleged mismanagement. The letter dated May 1950 was addressed to the Lutheran pastor Alfred Herrmann, an old friend who had been persecuted by the Nazi leaders of the German Ethnic Group of Romania for his socialist sympathies. Alfred Herrmann (1888–1962), former first pastor of Bucharest in the period 1937–1946, was one of the supporters of the new communist regime in the Evangelical Church of Augustan Confession of Romania (Weber and Baier 2015, 245). The document represents a critical reply to a series of letters received from Herrmann during 1950. In this letters Herrmann argued that he had supported the new regime because the church needed to embrace the so-called “peace movement” and to involve itself in building the new society. The Fight for Peace Committee was an institution created by the communist regime in Romania in order to enlist clergy of the officially recognised denominations and mobilise them for the achievement of political aims.

To answer the motives invoked by Herrmann, Roth claims that the aim of each Christian should be to oppose the use of violence “in any form.” From this point of view, peace represents an aim that the Church must naturally follow. At the same time, Roth argued against the idea that the Church should support the newly established communist regime because, according to him, the Church should become involved only in those “forms of social organisation” in which “love for our fellow men can truly exist.” He rejects the involvement of the Church in building the “new socialist society” through a subtle critique of the violent methods used by the communist regime to impose it. Ironically, Roth points out to Herrmann that a series of motives invoked by the latter to justify his support for the communist regime were similar to those presented to him several years before by Bishop Staedel, the pastor placed by the Nazis at the head of the Evangelical Church of Augustan Confession of Romania in 1941.