ZAGREB, 6 Nov 2021 - A book about emigrants and returnees in the period of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, that is the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, written by historian Darija Hofgräff Marić was launched in the Croatian State Archives on Friday evening.
The 210-page book deals with the emigration of the Croats in the second half of the 19th century and in the first four decades of the 20th century and particularly with the care for orphans of deceased expats.
The book reviewer, Professor Ulf Brunnbauer, whose research is mainly devoted to the social history of Southeastern Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries, said during the presentation of the book the emigration had been the Croatian continuity in the last 100 years.
Author Darija Hofgräff Marić said that her book focused on the legal and institutional framework of the protection of expats and returnees.
She also said that she found it irritating when emigrations were commented on only in negative terms. The processes of migrations have both good and bad sides, she said adding that her own experience had proven that. Hofgräff Marić, born in Zenica, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, began her tertiary education in Sarajevo in the 1989/1990 academic year, however, due to the war she had to leave Bosnia and Herzegovina and she finished that education in 2006 in Zagreb.
She said that the Croatians are prone to complaining about states and state institutions. However, not everything is up to the states and state authorities, and all of us have personal and civic responsibility and we can take bottom-up initiatives, Hofgräff Marić said.
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