The park of dr. Franjo Racki

Franjo Rački was born in Fužine on 25^th November, 1828. He was a Croatian politician and historian, a man whose name mostly reminds us of Josip Juraj Strossmayer and the foundation of the former Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts.

This scientific-cultural establishment was primarily designed as an institution which would study the culture and languages of all the Yugoslav nations and their scientific achievements.

Franjo Rački became the first president of the Academy in 1866. For the following twenty years, he carried out his programme, which had been proclaimed in 1860 and chiefly based on the unity and brotherhood of all the South Slavs.

Among other things, he was a politician, publicist and historian. He began his education in Fužine, his hometown, and continued it in Rijeka, Varaždin and Senj. In Senj, he graduated in theology. He was ordained as priest in 1852 and three years later received his PhD in theology in Vienna.

  In 1857, he moved from Senj to the Croatian Institute of St. Jerome in Rome where he stayed until 1860. Six years later, he served as clergyman in Đakovo and later in Zagreb.

Together with Strossmayer, he founded the People’s Party and was three times elected to the Croatian Parliament. All this time, he wrote and studied the history of the South Slavs. He started the magazines Pozor, for which he also worked as executive editor, and Književnik, the first Croatian magazine which dealt with the national history.

His scientific paper was crowned with the publication of a large number of his history works among which perhaps the most important one is Bogumili i Patareni (Bogomils and Patarenes) in which he introduced some of the hypotheses about the establishment of the Bosnian Church. He died in Zagreb on 13^th February, 1894 where he was buried at the Mirogoj Cemetery.

Today in Fužine, there is a memorial plaque on the house of Franjo Rački, one of the streets carries his name and the newly decorated park is named after him in his honour.

The Franjo Rački Association was founded in 2005. It contributes to the study of the figure and works of this eminent Croatian intellectual by various events and scientific professional assemblies.