Politika
- Bulgarian Events
- The Shameful Grandson of a Famous Ancestor
- Before the Great Patron
Politika's front page of 10 November 1926 carried a signed column by Kosta Todorov on Bulgarian affairs. He accepted that Andrey Lyapchev's government was turning its policy toward London and Rome and that reactionary parties were trying to harness the Agrarian Union. He dismissed as invented a report that Omarchevski and Markov had met the former King Ferdinand in Berlin. A badly damaged report headed 'The Shameful Grandson of a Famous Ancestor' described skilful police work exposing fascist agents and the dark figure of a man with a brilliant name, and it warned of unpleasant consequences for France and Italy. A short item reported that Zagreb Archbishop Ante Bauer had spoken at the Strossmayer monument in praise of Strossmayer's services to the nation's culture.
This edition translates three front-page items. The report on the 'shameful grandson' survives only as a narrow strip, and the missing words are marked [?]; they have not been reconstructed. Other items on the page, including the Buenos Aires legation story, the reader's letter 'Шта се говори?', the Greek election reports and the item on the former Kaiser, lose words at the tile edges and are not translated.
Translation
Bulgarian Events
It is perfectly true that the Lyapchev government is orienting its policy more and more toward London and Rome. It is equally true that the Bulgarian reactionary parties are trying to put the powerful Bulgarian Agrarian Union in their service. But that Omarchevski and Markov met with the former King Ferdinand in Berlin in order to agree on joint work with him seems to me completely invented.
Kosta Todorov.
The Shameful Grandson of a Famous Ancestor
[?] character and may [?] unpleasant consequences for [?] France and Italy. [?] the political significance [?] it is one of [?] that have taken place since [?]. The skilful [?] of the police has shed light on [?] of fascist agents in [?], and in that light [?] the dark figure of a [?] who bore a brilliant name,
Before the Great Patron
The Archbishop of Zagreb, Dr. Ante Bauer, gave a speech before the Strossmayer monument, extolling his merits for the culture of our people.
Context
Lyapchev's government and Yugoslav concern over Macedonia
The government Todorov discusses was headed by Andrey Lyapchev, who became Bulgarian prime minister on 4 January 1926 at the head of a coalition of the Democratic Alliance and the National Liberal Party. Lyapchev was born in Resen, then part of the Ottoman Empire, and as prime minister he was criticized for tolerating the activities of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, which strained Bulgaria's relations with Yugoslavia and Greece. That helps explain why a Belgrade daily followed the foreign orientation of his cabinet so closely. Lyapchev himself had been imprisoned under Aleksandar Stamboliyski from 1922 until the military coup of 1923. The claims that the cabinet was leaning toward London and Rome, and that reactionary parties were courting the Agrarian Union, are Todorov's own assessment, as is his dismissal of the alleged Berlin meeting with ex-King Ferdinand. The author, Kosta Todorov (1889–1947), was a Bulgarian revolutionary, diplomat, politician and journalist.
Ricciotti Garibaldi Jr. as the 'shameful grandson'
The legible words of the report speak of skilful police work that exposed fascist agents and revealed the dark figure of someone who bore a brilliant name, while the headline calls him the shameful grandson of a famous ancestor. The fragment loses his name at the edge of the tile, but the description matches Ricciotti Garibaldi Jr., grandson of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the hero of Italian unification. Historical accounts describe him as a spy for Fascist Italy and a double agent rather than a genuine anti-fascist, and they hold that the French police were forewarned, apparently through a leak from Garibaldi's group. Mussolini's political police had thus planted an informer among Italian exiles on French soil, which is the background to the paper's warning of unpleasant consequences for France and Italy.
The Catalan plot of Prats de Molló
The operation Garibaldi betrayed was an attempted military invasion of Catalonia from France, planned by Francesc Macià and the leadership of Estat Català to win Catalan independence. Between 50 and 100 Italian exiles took part, many of them veterans of the Garibaldine Legion of the First World War, which helps explain how a Garibaldi gained access to the plan. The French police arrested most of the participants near the Spanish border, 111 people in all, and Macià was arrested on 4 November 1926 at the country house he was using, six days before this issue appeared. Macià was later convicted and sentenced to two months in jail and a fine of 100 francs.
Archbishop Antun Bauer and the Strossmayer monument
The speaker the paper calls Dr. Ante Bauer was Antun Bauer, who took over the management of the Archdiocese of Zagreb on 26 April 1914. Before his elevation he had been a political figure as well as a theologian: he was elected to the Croatian Parliament five times between 1885 and 1911, finally as a representative of the Croatian Party of Rights, from which he moved closer to the Croatian-Serbian Coalition. He became a full member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1899 and was its sponsor from 1915 until his death, which gave him standing in Zagreb's learned institutions when he praised Strossmayer's services to culture. The description of Strossmayer as a 'great patron' and of 'the culture of our people' is the paper's own framing; the excerpt records only the gist of the speech.
Original
Бугарски догађаји
Савршено је тачно да влада Љапчева све више оријентише своју политику ка Лондону и Риму. Исто је тако тачно да бугарске реакционарне странке гледају да ставе у своју службу моћни бугарски Земљораднички Савез. Али, да су се Омарчевски и Марков састали у Берлину са бившим краљем Фердинандом у циљу договора за заједнички рад са њиме, изгледа ми потпуно измишљено.
Срамни унук славног претка
[?] карактер и може [?] незгодних последица по [?] Француске и Италије. [?] на политички значај [?] она је једна од [?] које су се после [?] одиграле. Спретна [?] полиције осветлила је [?] фашистичких агената у [?], и у тој светлости [?] мрачна фигура једног [?] је носио блиставо име,
Пред великим меценом
Загребачки надбискуп Др. Анте Бауер држао је говор пред спомеником Штросмајеровим, величајући његове заслуге за културу нашега народа.