The Passing of Ivan Čizmić: a Leading Historian of the Diaspora

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Along with the prestigious annual science prize (2005) awarded by our science, education and sports ministry, Čizmić was a recipient of a national decoration for his scholarly work (the Order of Danica Hrvatska with the image of Ruđer Bošković, received in 1999), and a number of professional awards and prizes.

 

It was with a heavy heart and disbelief that we received the news of the sudden death of Ivan Čizmić, a brilliant historian of the Croatian diaspora, an accomplished researcher of the cultural practices of the people that have migrated out of our country, one of the rare true polymaths, and a refined authority on modern social and cultural processes among fourth and fifth generation descendants of ethnic Croatian immigrants to major multicultural hubs of the developed world—from Alaska to the Tierra del Fuego, from the south of Africa to Australia and New Zealand.

Ivan Čizmić was an emeritus scientific advisor with the Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences, a renowned historiographer of our diaspora, and a long-standing head of the history department at the Croatian Heritage Foundation. He was the author of a number of significant monographs on the subject of our overseas diaspora in the United States of America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the co-creator of multiple compendia on migration covering socio-cultural themes, and made great lexicographic contributions. He also authored just shy of five hundred original scientific papers on the outward migration of Croatians, published in numerous journals in the country and abroad. His historiographic and opinion journalism oeuvre, created over six decades, is the fruit of tireless research of the authentic milieus that are home to our diaspora across five continents, which the late professor Čizmić began in the 1960s thanks to a Fulbright scholarship.

Along with the prestigious annual science prize (2005) awarded by our science, education and sports ministry, Čizmić was a recipient of a national decoration for his scholarly work (the Order of Danica Hrvatska with the image of Ruđer Bošković, received in 1999), and a number of professional awards and prizes.

A long-standing former member of the CHF history department, where he launched his research career, he continued his collaboration as an outside advisor to the CHF, the oldest institution covering diaspora relations, contributing through his counsel and written work to the quality of CHF serial publications, including Matica magazine and the Croatian Emigrant Almanac. As one of the key consultants—conveying the life of ethnic Croatians abroad during the turbulent societal changes of the twentieth century—he was one of the drivers behind the Leksikon hrvatskoga iseljeništva i manjina (“Lexicon of Emigrant and Minority Croatians”), consistently pointing out that outward migration from Croatia was integral to understanding our history and our civilisational and cultural heritage.

Ivan Čizmić was born in Zadvarje on 28 August 1934. He completed his secondary education in Split in 1953. He earned a degree in history at the University of Zagreb’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in 1959, acquiring a doctorate in 1973 with a dissertation on the south Slavic diaspora in the United States of America and the formation of a Yugoslav state in 1918. Naturally inquisitive, he also earned a degree in law in Zagreb in 1963. He launched his academic career in 1963 as an assistant lecturer at the University of Split’s Faculty of Law. He moved to Zagreb in 1964 to join the Croatian Heritage Foundation. Čizmić appeared as a lecturer at numerous symposia and academic congresses. As a participant since 1988 of institution building in the formation of public bodies that study and work with Croatians moving abroad, he worked as a scientific advisor at the Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies before moving on in 1993 to work at the Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences.

Along with his broad oeuvre as a researcher and opinion journalist—preserved in numerous books and journals—the major contribution Čizmić leaves us in legacy is his association with numerous companions and colleagues among people of Croatian descent abroad.

He nurtured sincere friendships with the commonest impoverished migrant workers and with leading intellectuals at prestigious international laboratories, and with those of adventurous spirit who opted for globetrotting as a lifestyle. As a member of a number of expert commission for CHF diaspora projects and events, he was always a valued advisor and an inexhaustible source of insight. His expert assessments, the breadth of his intellectual interests, and his sovereign command of the vast scope of our cultural landscape as it is shaped by migrant circumstances, have forever indebted us in the pursuit of our projects and events.

We will remember Ivan Čizmić as an exceptional person and a true friend, an intellectual of uncommon vitality in work. His historiographic oeuvre, the compelling élan with which he imbued his opinion journalism, and, above all, his personal integrity, have earned him a place in our scholarly and cultural history. A patriot and cosmopolite, he collaborated with former President Franjo Tuđman—also a historian by profession, from the mid-1960s when they worked together in the fold of the Croatian Heritage Foundation.

Among the many works of enduring value are his Hrvati u životu Sjedinjenih Američkih Država (“Croatians in the Life of the United States of America”, Zagreb 1982), Iseljavanje iz Hrvatske u razdoblju od 1880–1914. (“Emigration From Croatia in the Period from 1880 to 1914”, Zagreb 1986), Povijest Hrvatske bratske zajednice 1894.-1994. (“History of the Croatian Fraternal Union of America from 1894 to 1994”, Zagreb 1994), From the Adriatic to Lake Erie: A History of Croatians in Greater Cleveland (co-authored with I. Miletić and G. J. Prpic, Willoughby 2000), Iseljena Hrvatska (“Emigrant Croatia”, co-authored with M. Sopta and V. Šakić, Zagreb 2005), and Modernizacija u Hrvatskoj i hrvatska odselidba (“Modernisation in Croatia and Croatian Emigration”, co-authored with I. Rogić, Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences, Zagreb 2011). He served in an advisory capacity for the Leksikon hrvatskog iseljeništva i manjina (“Lexicon of Emigrant and Minority Croatians”, Ivo Pilar Institute of Social Sciences & Croatian Heritage Foundation, Zagreb 2020).

Čizmić also collaborated on publications such as the Proceedings of the Faculty of Law in Split (1964), Historijski zbornik (the journal of the Croatian Historical Society, 1966–67, 1974–75), Zborník Filozofickej fakulty Univerzity Komenského / Historica (Bratislava 1970), Zbornik Historijskog arhiva u Karlovcu (the journal of the Historical Archives of Karlovac, 1970), Emigration from Northern, Central and Southern Europe (Kraków 1981), Vyst’ahovalectvo a život krajanov vo svete (Bratislava 1982), American Labor and Immigration History, 1877–1920s: Recent European Research (Chicago 1983), Journal of Croatian Studies (1970–2000), Studia Croatica (1970–1999), Iseljenički kalendar / Hrvatski iseljenički zbornik (“Croatian Emigrant Almanac”, 1966–2021), and Matica magazine (1966–2021).

The departure of Ivan Čizmić leaves a deep void in his family—in the hearts of his beloved daughter Ivana and wife Vlasta, but also raises him to a privileged place among those of us who knew him well and whose lives were forever enriched by this virtuous southern Croatian of cheerful spirit and keen mind.

On behalf of the Croatian Heritage Foundation, its entire staff and our director Mijo Marić, I extend my deepest condolences to the grieving family.

 

By: Vesna Kukavica

 

 

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