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The biography of Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980), written by the eminent German historian Marie-Jeanine Calic, a professor at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich and an expert on the history of Southeast Europe, sparked a new wave of interest in the German media for the leader of the former SFR Yugoslavia.
The book “Tito. Eternal Partisan” (Titus. Der ewige Partisan), published this autumn, has 442 pages and is sold at a price of 29.95 euros.
“Josip Broz Tito was an eternal partisan, a typical product of the extreme times that he lived, he suffered, but he also formed himself. At the time of his death, he was considered one of the most internationally respected statesmen. Today, many declare him a brutal dictator. Right? “, it is affirmed in the description of this biography of Tito.
Mari-Žanin Čalić believes that Tito “was not a democratic ruler, but neither was he a dictator like Hitler and Stalin.”
Numerous German media also advertised about “Eternal Partisan”.
The harshest criticism was published by the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”, which states that the existing myths about Tito are still “strong as steel” and that the author should have “had a greater distance from the character of the title of her book.”
The biggest challenge for Tito’s biographers is “to recognize what news about Titus was published during his reign to build a legend about him”, thus it is noted that most of the books on Broz thus far had a positive attitude towards him , which was certainly aided by For 35 years, “the propaganda apparatus of an entire country has been working on it.” Therefore, when writing about Titus, it is important to find a “way out of idolatry”, which is why Mari-Žanin Čalić specifically criticizes phrases like this:
“Having nerves of steel in fire situations, that was one of Tito’s greatest qualities.”
“Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” goes on to point out that “Tito has charisma and knew how to find followers”, but also that Yugoslavia under his leadership, thanks to the context of the Cold War, played a more important role in the world than it deserves. But that’s exactly Tito’s political ability and success, the newspaper claims.
Tito was described as a “dictator” who ruled the repressive apparatus until his death, brutally punishing the enemies of the regime, but also as a “great man of his time who left with that time.” However, when it comes to the states of the disintegrated SFRY, the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” believes that most of them still share a common cultural space and that they represent a region and a “Yugosphere” that no longer depends on Tito.
The left-wing liberal “Süddeutsche Zeitung” praises the book and describes Tito as “a mythical liberator, a dictator, a man who said ‘No’ to Stalin and who held together a multinational state.” It is emphasized that Calic wants to present Tito in the context of his time and that the play was written for a wide audience, which has both advantages and disadvantages.
It is claimed that Tito was the only one who led a multinational movement in Yugoslavia in World War II and that he fought against the establishment of Greater Serbia, Greater Croatia, Greater Albania, but also against the Germans, and that in the end Tito’s supporters triumphed above all. . No one else in Europe managed to get rid of the Nazi occupation almost on their own, the newspaper quotes a statement from the book.
Victory in World War II is the basis of the Tito myth, the newspaper believes, but also the way he ruled socialist Yugoslavia: he was brutal in terms of nationalism, he gave citizens the greatest freedoms in socialist countries, he created Yugoslavia’s international reputation. On the other hand, for this reason, the consequences of Tito’s government in society are neglected, as well as the power of his dictatorship. Goli Otok is also mentioned as a prison for political opponents of the Tito regime.
“Süddeutsche Zeitung” also questions the author’s assessment that Tito ruled a version of democratic socialism (self-government) that had a “repressive basis” and that Tito should be tried more harshly.
In any case, the media reception of the new biography of Tito shows that the fascination for the Yugoslav marshal in Germany continues.
(Kurir.rs/Index)
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