Soldier Milutin Milanković

IMPERIAL AND ROYAL SOLDIER MILUTIN MILANKOVIĆ:  

Memories from the Past as a Signposts for the Future

Abstract | Milutin Milanković, the giant of world science, was an officer in two armies: the Imperial-Royal Austro-Hungarian Army and the Army of the Kingdom of Serbia. In his memoirs, he describes in a unique manner his experiences and thoughts on the days spent in uniform, in the barracks and on the battlefield. By placing Milanković's personal reminiscence of this type in the general historical, social and the context of the history of the world and Serbian literature, we find the specific main character and interpret it wishing to preserve this confirmed value in the history of our culture.

Keywords | Milutin Milanković, soldier, officer, Balkan Wars, Habsburg Monarchy, Kingdom of Serbia

“There is a history in all men’s lives”

William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2 [1]

1.        INTRODUCTION: THE ARMY DAYS OF A FAMOUS SCIENTIST

In his literary work Memories, experiences and insights [2], our celebrated scientist Milutin Milanković (1878 – 1958) proved himself to be a very skilled and talented writer. Following the footsteps of Charles Darwin, who wrote his memoirs, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin [3], as straightforward chronological telling of his life in which he presented his human and truly poetic side, Milanković managed to overthrow the general attitude that the scientific memoirs as a genre are “in general an ineffably boring”, as Walter Gratzer claims in his book Literary Companion to Science [4].

On the pages that represent the complete history of the Serbs of the Habsburg Monarchy, Milanković left us, among other valuable testimonies, a detailed description of his days in the uniforms he wore and the military campaigns he participated in. In addition, Milanković in unsurpassed, honest and – if in this context this word can be used at all – a charming way describes its participation in the First Balkan War, presenting both heroic and authentic records of a completely different nature.

2.        MILUTIN MILANKOVIĆ AS AN IMPERIAL SOLDIER IN HIS NATIVE LAND

2.1.       Military Pedigree and Non-Heroic Nature

As a man who lived in time from Belle Époque to the Cold War, Milutin Milanković writes an autobiography in a way that reveals a bright observer, who looks at the beautiful moments with a smile, and on hard times with gratification that they become a thing of the past, forgiven and forgotten. “Non-heroic by nature, I have always avoided all conflicts and disagreements” (Milanković 1997, p. 19) admits a man who, precisely because of that, looks at the armies, wars and misfortunes they bear with them in his own special way, addressing as enemies all those who demolish and destroy all over the world and always identifying with those who suffer the consequences, even if they were temporarily on the opposing sides.

Milanković originates from a large and prominent Serbian family, which has always differentiate from Dalj, a village where they lived for a two and a half centuries, primarily because of their upbringing, education and enlightenment. Among the numerous educated Milankovićs from Dalj, there were also those who, as a lifelong call, choose military service, and as a first among them, Dimitrije Milanković, Milutin's grandfather's brothers, stands out. Highly educated, graduating from the military academy in Wiener Neustadt, he voluntarily went to Serbia, whose army he served for forty years, eventually reaching the rank of Colonel General. To him, Grandpa-Mita, as our scientist called him, “Bishop Strossmayer uttered these words literally: 'It's easy for you, Serbs! You have your own history!'” (Milanković 1997, p. 39). The greatest thinker among Milanković family before Milutin, Uroš Milanković (1800 - 1849) [5], a nineteenth-century progressive philosopher, was as well in the military service, as he served as a jurist at the military-appeals court in Vienna and worked as a military-judicial officer before retiring.

Nevertheless, even as a young man, after meeting his auntie's brother, Andrija Radovanović, inventor and engineer, and reading in “Srbobran” newspapers about life and works of Nikola Tesla, Milutin Milanković, instead of military service, started to imagine “how wonderful it would be to become an engineer or inventor like uncle-Andrija or Nikola Tesla“ (Milanković 1997, p. 137).

2.2.       Imperial-royal Home Guard Officer Milutin Milanković

On this path, Milutin Milanković had to dedicate himself to further education. Prior to having acquired the engineering diploma in Vienna and, after that, as the first among all the Serbs, a diploma of a doctor of technical sciences, he also gained a formative life experience when he served his one-year military duty in the country in which he was born.

2.2.1.      A student in military schools for Austro-Hungarian higher classes

In the “Officer Exam” chapter, Milutin Milanković describes how he came to the 28th Home Guard Regiment in Osijek as a private one-year-volunteer, who had to live and feed at his own expense and pay a certain rent for his rifle. At the best local tailor, he paid a significant amount of money for a mandatory “chic” uniform for this kind of military service. Aware that he will serve among the elitist, and not in the elite, Milanković had already concluded: “In the Austro-Hungarian army at that time, the deep gap separated general youth from the officers regarded as an aristocracy. This undemocratic principle was one of the causes of the defeat of the Austrian army in the First World War” (Milanković 1997, p. 274).

The young future officer was then dispatched from Osijek to Zagreb, in the School for the officers at the 25th Home Guard Regiment. There he settled down nicely – “I found a nice room in the honorable Serbian family” – and then a recruitment training started, which the writer refers to as “The Black Days for lazy me”. The strict regime of life in the barracks led to the sudden change of the genteel student of Vienna: “I moaned and in disgusting words, learned there from the Corporal to a great extent, cursed Francis Josephus and the whole imperial family” (Milanković 1997: p. 274).

The future scientist then noted that “military service kills every independent initiative and turns people into robot machines” (Milanković 1997, p. 275), but soon joined the School for reserve administrative officers in Budapest. This institution was completely different, adapted to the wishes of its attendant: “The school lasted from eight to twelve, and in the afternoon it would serve us to learn our school items, light as feather. We lived like kidneys in the fat. (...) After six o'clock in the evening, when our school was over, I would cross the chain bridge to Pest and then spend the evening in opera, inns, taverns or elsewhere”(Milanković 1997, p. 276).

In March 1903, Milanković was produced in corporal and returned to the regiment in Osijek, where he spent another half a year of military service, working in administrative matters, and his environment, both subordinate and superior, grabbed his closeness “because they knew I was carrying great wines and brandy from my cellar in Dalj” (Milanković 1997, p.  277), as he later admits. In September, in Pest, Milanković took an Officers exam, in front of a commission with only one member speaking the Serbian language and confirming the full accuracy of all the answers of his compatriots. Having obtained the confirmation from his famous uncle-Andrija about the fictitious engineer job in the Škoda cannon factory, after passing the exam, Milanković was already awarded the first promotion: “three months later, at the first advance, I would be produced as Lieutenant of the Home Guar forces” (Milanković 1997, p. 278).

Emotions towards the newly gained rank, the Imperial-Royal lieutenant explains in the following sentences: “On October 1, 1903, I replaced my uniform with a civilian suit and returned to civilization. I throw my own, still barely worn military clothes at the ground, and I ordered this pile to be taken to Dalj and be given to the first traveling theater that appeared there” (Milanković 1997, p. 279).

2.2.2.      Military maneuvres and the Devil’s Division

In September 1908, under the command of Emperor Francis Josephus and Crown Prince Francis Ferdinand, the Dual Monarchy, wanting to demonstrate its power to the whole world, organized military maneuvers, the representation of its new cannons, uniforms and wariness of its troops, in which, as the reserve lieutenant of the Home Guard Army, Milutin Milanković also had to participate. In accordance with his described non-heroic nature, but also as a completely honest and cheerful character, he describes the regiment under the command of Svetozar Borojević without classical military exaggerations. Milanković says that the name of the division was given by the emperor himself – “All of her members, including myself, were mesmerized by that overwhelming, praiseworthy commendation”, ironically he notices – and describes how he ended up in front of his soldiery just because his meals were reduced to the military minimum. He was completely aware that the maneuvers were masquerade and the mere presentation of the personal conviction of the rulers in the inviolability of the commanders and the invincibility of the army of the Danube Monarchy. A future scientist then acted in the role of the supplier, moving under the mask through imaginary front lines and bringing “new uniforms, caps, necklaces, razors and other accessories needed for the toilet”, as well as “shaving soap, hair and mustache gel and other necessary needs”, in order for soldiers not to appear in front the ruler unworthy, “with shoes that have the front, and the pants that have the back windows!” (Milanković 1997, p. 387). Instead of training for the war, he lived on the line of the imaginary front like in a comfortable civic lounge, where he enjoyed being treated as an English lord instead of preparing himself as a capable soldier. Being aware that “the imperial maneuver is considered a kind of court ball” he admits, “For all the time of our glorious warriors' movements, I only had four worries: what to eat, what to drink, what to smoke and where to spend the night. I lived in the natural life of a carnivore animal, as a brave, cunning cat. Such a life has removed all the other worries from my soul, strengthened my body, refreshed my nerves and cured me of nervousness in a more unorthodox, better way than any sanatorium of this world would do. I returned to Vienna rejuvenated, fresh and optimistic” (Milanković 1997, p. 388).

2.3.       Self-knowledge and departure to Fathereland

After Milanković's return to Vienna, the Annexation crisis followed, with all its manifestations in the country that caused it. When he saw war-rhetoric in the Austrian capital's newspaper, crowned with the famous words of “fight against the Greater Serbian propaganda and politics”, he concluded that “in addition to attacking Serbia, a hunt for the Serbs in the monarchy is also being prepared”. In the scene where, while preparing for the trip, he saw the first “countless wagons loaded with cannons”, and then “train by train filled with soldiers”, Milanković understood that the future line of the front was being prepared, and he felt epiphany in one movie-like moment: “On the bridge that has been laid over the railroad track, we saw gathering crowd that waved the arms and enthusiastically cheered the soldiers. At that time, I felt quite clearly that I was in an enemy country. And that feeling did not leave me anymore” (Milanković 1997, p. 389). Then Milanković decided, making one of the most important decisions in his life, to build his desired academic career, after the invitation of Bogdan Gavrilović to join the Belgrade University, “among his own”.

When elected as a professor in Belgrade, Milanković had to terminate legal connections with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the country in which he was born and spent his childhood and youth. This departure was complete only by the transition to Serbian citizenship, which Milanković, according to the rules of the service, performed with all the duties he had as a reserve officer of the Austro-Hungarian army. As a professor in Belgrade, he came to Dalj, dressed his military uniform and handed over the request to be excluded from the citizenship and military service of the Dual Monarchy. After paying a fee, he was free to go to his Fatherland and now obligated to join the Serbian Royal Army.

3.        MILUTIN MILANKOVIĆ AS AN OFFICER OF THE SERBIAN ROYAL ARMY

Former Austrian reserve officer came to the Belgrade military office, and described how, without Austrian bureaucratic maze, he became a Serb soldier who will soon take a part in a liberation war: “We sat in a friendly conversation. Then the military doctor appeared. 'Alright then, Žarko', he said to him, 'look at the mister professor, so we can take him to the army!' I was ready to, according to the old law of the Austrian army, strip naked in front of the doctor. But he said to me, 'Why should I even examine you? The appearance speaks for itself!' Without further formalities, I was included in the army of the Kingdom of Serbia” (Milanković 1997, p. 424).

3.1.       Battle trumpets calling: a referent for the foreign correspondence of the first-call Danube Division

When in Serbia, three years after this event, general mobilization was announced in order to completely liberate Serb countries from the Turks, Milanković made sure that he did not go in the war without the proper gear: “I went to the city central bazaar to get war equipment. I bought a big soft blanket made of camel hair, woolen sweatshirts, socks, protective hood, aluminum bottle and glass, thermos bottle and many other necessary and unnecessary things. I stood with the old wise proverb: 'The he who carries doesn't need to beg!'” (Milanković 1997, p. 430).

Milanković was assigned as a referent for the foreign correspondence of the Danube Division of the first call, along with his colleague Stanoje Stanojević (1874 – 1937), famous historian, university professor, editor of the encyclopedia and academician. Since their superiors did not immediately understand what exactly should have to be the duty of the persons of this rank, Stanojević explained that, due to foreign language knowledge, Milanković and he could follow the reports in the foreign newspapers on the movement of enemy troops, and report to the higher officers.

“Then everyone found out that we were important figures for the role that we will play in future war operations. We got the necessary sum for the subscription of foreign newspapers and we spent it on it without hesitation. Otherwise, we did not have any other duties nor jobs at the headquarters of the division whatsoever: we came only for the conversations and coffee” (Milanković, 1997), the scientist explains his first war schedule in the Serbian army.

After all, Milanković went on to really go to the war, by train, and the time on the road to the battleground transformed into the atmosphere of the excursion, with “interactive conversations with other members of the staff and in endless jokes”. Under the direct command of colonel Miloš Božanović, countryman from Slavonia and a colleague engineer, educated in Sankt Petersburg, Milanković and his companion Stanojević, joined with Pavle Popović (1868 – 1939), a literary historian, rector of the University of Belgrade and academician, were considered as the guests and their new war schedule was, as the sincere writer admits, “to entertain and carry on our conversations with the others, which we were happy to respond to”.

3.2.       Milutin Milanković’s War diary: Reminiscence surrounding the Kumanovo battle and personal “glorious warfare”

With enough free time, Milanković, like his other colleagues, began to run a personal war diary, which did not survive the First World War.  According to the author's assumption, the occupant Austrian officer who settled in a scientist's apartment in Belgrade, “considered it to be an important document and, probably, sent it to the Vienna War Archive” (Milanković, p.433). Nevertheless, reconstructing it more than two decades later by memory, but in full detail, by exact dates and hours of the day, Milutin Milanković created a unique testimony of the events prior and soon after the Kumanovo battle.

Accommodated upon their arrival at the Zabel Monastery, intellectuals spent their time sleeping and resting, but the writer declares that the war had made the necessary changes in his appearance: “I have stopped shaving my mustache in Belgrade and the black whiskers began already to complete my warrior appearance” (Milanković 1997, p. 436). Due to the favorable situation on the front, the biggest event in this emplacement was the preparation for the reception of Prince Arsen, the king's brother and the commander of the cavalry division, who announced his visit, but in the end, did not appear among the university professors. After the Kumanovo battle and Serbian glorious victory, Milanković and Stanojević went to Mlado Nagoričane, with a plan to transfer themselves to Kumanovo, in order to finally resume their work with the foreign press.

Through a fresh battlefield covered by the corpses of Serb and defeated Turkish soldiers, above which “the ravens circle and collapse on their prey”, professors traveled on a wagon, simple carriage owned by one local man. In addition to that man, who was responsible for their transportation, the professors traveled with one soldier, unable to move after the battle and loaded onto the wagon. They were moving slowly, and the cautious man in charge insisted that they pay extra attention to any potentially dangerous detail on the road. One such detail was the sudden appearance of a red fez in an ambush, described by a writer and protagonist in the manner of the best realist and humorist:

“Frightened, Stanoje shouted: 'That one is shooting at us with a rifle!' and started running. And I ran after him. I heard a buzz in my left ear and because of that, I had the feeling that next to him would whistle the sound of a bullet, so I did not believe it would hit me. At that time, I noticed that both of us ran into a plowed land and, in addition to all the efforts of my feet, I slowly moved away, so I was not able to escape beyond the range of the military rifle. So I decided to seek salvation in a ditch dug by the road. But before I realized that intention, I stopped and looked back towards the bridge. Here I see this. Our soldier who told us he could not move jumped out of the wagon quickly. And Stanoje stopped. I see that he was in a difficult situation because he commanded the soldier: 'Hold the gun at ready!' The soldier listens and points the rifle in the valley. From there, a bowed man appeared, indeed covered with a red fez, but in a peasant dress and without a weapon. Spreading both hands he said, 'It's me, my brother!' This man did not manage to replace his Turkish fez with something else, and he hid under the bridge in a completely innocent, discreet intention, when our followers saw him and frightened him, himself and the two of us” (Milanković 1997, p. 447).

Having recovered from this stressful meeting and spent another day in Kumanovo, in which they failed to find the necessary materials from abroad, Stanojević and Milanković went to Skoplje, in which the Turks surrendered without a fight. In the former Dušan's capital, they applied for service in the press bureau of the Supreme Command, and, along with their colleagues Slobodan Jovanović and Branislav Petronijević, they were then finally able to receive and provide information that led them to the war in the first place: Stanoje Stanojević gave information to foreign journalists and Milutin Milanković translated the German press for our army needs.

With reminiscences about Branislav Nušić and the joyful days spent in a company of our famous comedian, who was a hart and a soul of all civil and military rallies and parties in the liberated city of Skoplje, Milutin Milanković finishes his war diary. When a ceasefire was concluded on November 24, and their immediate commander Božanović was produced in the rank of general for war merits, the university professors were given permission to return from Skoplje to Belgrade, because, as Milanković acknowledged, they “became completely unnecessary”. With the most sincere acknowledgment – “We returned after a two-month absence from a bloody war - without even smelling the gunpowder“ – (Milanković 1997, p. 453), Milanković ends his confession of his “non-combatant” military participation in the liberation of ancient Serbian provinces.

Upon returning from the front to the capital, the military duty of professors Stanojević and Milanković did not cease: like all the other professors of the University, they were deployed to the position of censors in the Belgrade Main Post office. The daily obligation included two hours of daily engagement – in Milanković's case, night, from 10 am to midnight – and the supervision of the written correspondence of the citizens of Serbia with foreign countries.

The Second Balkan war, a Belgrade-based prominent professor spent without a military service and schedule, and before the very beginning of the Great War, Milutin Milanković married, taking his 'brother in arms' Stanoje Stanojević for a best man. At the moment of greatest happiness in his life, on their wedding trip to Dalj, Milanković and his wife Hristina, ended up in a whirlpool of circumstances that separated them from Belgrade and Serbia in the next five years.

3.3.       A turbulent five-year bridal journey: secret mission and the spoils of war

In his home in Dalj, after the outbreak of the First World War, Milutin Milanković became a prisoner of his native land. From internment in his own home, followed by the prison cells in Osijek and Karlovac, to the prisoner-of-war camp in Neusiedl and finally life in strictly controlled conditions in the war-time Budapest, our great scientist endured the burden of the Great War. During that time, his mother died, his son was born, his wife was ill and cured, and he had to deal with both scientific and engineering work, having to take care of the mere existence of his family. After the liberation of all Serbian countries and the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Milutin Milanković left Budapest with the same ship he came to Dalj in 1914. Preparing for a return to Belgrade in the spring of 1919, Milanković mentioned that he had to, “with the help of the English”, participate in one “delicate mission”. Despite the strict ban in this regard, he helped in transporting the securities and property of the Serbian Bank deposited in Budapest, by placing them in the cabin with his wife and child.

Milanković family found their apartment in Belgrade undamaged upon their return. Previously mentioned high ranking officer of the occupying force spent the war there and even furnished one room that was left empty by the legal owners. Of course, Milutin Milanković, as an honorable man, immediately contacted the authorities and tried to find the legal owners of, as he called it, “the spolis of war”.  Unable to find them, he gave it to his less fortunate colleagues and acquaintances, who were left after the war without their own furniture or even the whole houses.

In the time of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and until the Second World War, alongside a scientific career, Milanković enjoyed a well-deserved reputation аnd was called as a designer, consultant and expert in numerous engagements. Among others, Milanković worked on projects and supervised works at military airports and facilities in Bežanija, Zagreb, Mostar, Skoplje, Kraljevo, Pančevo and Zemun. At that time, during his business trip to Skoplje by car, he made the chance to show his wife and son the battlefield of the Kumanovo battle, where our army achieved a magnificent victory, and where Stanoje Stanojević and he performed the famous strategic withdrawal.

Horrors of the Second World War, the German and the Alied bombing as well, Milutin Milaković and his family survived in occupied Belgrade, without the scientist's personal engagement in army or military operations. In the post-war era, Milanković ended his academic career in socialistic Yugoslavia but also testified to the devastation and nationalization of his father's home in Dalj, as well as his son Vasko's emigration to distant Australia.

4.        CONCLUSIONS

From a literary-historical point of view, important equally for their documentary and literary value, Milanković's memories are a work that must inevitably be a part of everyone's reading. “The Early European” and “the last Mohicans”, as Svetozar Koljević called him [6], was as na author in his memoirs, a true relic of the past times, and also in the same time, with his ideas and work, the true precursor of the future.

Writing in the nineteenth-century fashion, he left for the future generations the testimonies of a true spiritual aristocrat. His writing style, in which you do not officially know, but can clearly sense the irony and sarcasm for everything that the Yellow-Black Monarchy represents, reveals the author's memories on the days spent in Austrian uniform as a specific kind of “Experiences of a good soldier Milanković in the World War”. The military environment where he was placed did not even understand how much it was exposed to his ridicule and how wrongly did it evaluate him, while he was semi-publicly making fun of it and hoping for the downfall od the Danube Monarchy.

As an author who described his army days in Serbian Royal Army in the time of the First Balkan War in a completely different way, he could not, by no means, become a type known from the history of literature as militis gloriosi [7]. He is not, in his cheerful and charming style, a boastful fabulator, but a chronicler and autobiographer, memoirist, and not a liar and a coward. As a written example of “non-combatant”, Milanković with his own character creates a new figure in Serbian literature, a complete antipode to a boastful soldier. The unrepeatable non-heroic, but a deeply humorous depicted act of the escape through the battlefield destroys all the stereotypes of the soldier as an inevitable braggart, and her author instantly becomes familiar and close to his readers.

Through Milanković's description of the military, soldiers, leaders, wars and himself personally in this context, as a non-combatant in the time of the war, our great scientist confirmed himself as a nationally conscious patriot, but at the same time as a true citizen of the world who considers the wars, sacrifices, and destruction on all the meridians as true tragedies in which the unique human race suffers from incalculable consequences.

Through this Milanković's extensive but interesting literary work, readers not only learn the details of his rich biography but also, with the huge and fruitful efforts of their author, truly can make a friend in an unexpected place. The brightness, charm and humor of Milanković's memories are the basic impression that we can take about him as a person from this book. One giant of world science has honored us with the privilege of approaching him through his literary work as an author and as a human being, and with each new reading and interpretation of his Memories, experiences and insights, we are reviving an unrepeatable intellect, whose character and work, in all living conditions and in all fields, should really be a singpost for a future to all of us.

5.        REFERENCES

[1]   Shakespeare W. (1993), Henry IV Part 2. In: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Ed. W. J. Craig. London: Parragon, 2H4, Act 3, Scene 1, Line 80.

[2]   Milanković M. (1997) Uspomene, doživljaji i saznanja. Belgrade: Zavod za udžbenike i nastavna sredstva.

[3]   Darvin Č. (1937) Moj život, translated by Milan S. Nedić. Belgrade: Srpska književna zadruga.

[4]   Gratzer W. (1990), A Literary Companion to Science. New York: Norton.

[5]   Radojčić M. (2009), Philosophy of Uroš Milanković. In Ocić Č. (ed) Stvaralaštvo Milutina Milankovića Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, pp. 447-464.

[6]   Koljević S. (2005), Milutin Milanković: an early European or the last of the Mohicans? In Berger A., Ercegovac M., Mesinger F. (eds.) Milutin Milankovitch Anniversary Symposium. Belgrade: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, pp. 3-10. 

[7]   Živković D. (1977), Lik militis gloriosi kod Sime Matavulja. In: Evropski okviri srpske književnosti II Belgrade: Prosveta, pp. 206-217.

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