Nikola Tesla – Croat or Serb?

In the “Canadian Serb-Defender” the notorious Lazo Kostić is fiercely angry and “losing his nerves” because of the scholar Nikola Tesla. He writes an article under the title “Attempts to Steal Nikola Tesla” and says:

“Since Nikola Tesla in America and in the entire world has a particularly great reputation, and since he was accidentally born in Lika, and that means Croatia, the Croats adopt him in full measure. They do this in various ways.”

First and most of all, and also most effectively, through lexicons, encyclopedias, handbooks.

There is nowhere in the world any lexicon, any encyclopedia, any professional system of physics where Nikola Tesla is designated as a Serb. And everywhere it is noted that he is by origin from Croatia, upon which the readers form a logical association that he is a Croat, because no living person in the world knows our national relations.

However, in some lexicons Tesla is directly designated as an ethnic Croat. Thus for example in one “Slavonic Encyclopedia” published in America in 1949, which I myself found in the hospitable home of dr. Uroš Seferović. It seems that its editor and compiler is one professor of Czech origin (dr. Ronček). The book is of lexicon format in one volume, but very large. It bears the title “Slavonic Encyclopaedia, edited by Joseph S. Roncek Ph.D. University of Bridgeport. Philosophical Library New York, 1949.”

On page 203 of that Encyclopedia, under the heading “Croats in the United States” it stands literally: “Croatian emigrants liked with pride to emphasize how great is the number of great people his people gave to America. Mihailo Pupin and Nikola Tesla, two great scholars . . .”

Further Lazo Kostić writes that in the “Universal Lexicon of the New Swiss Library” (edition 1958) it is written: “Nikola Tesla Croatian electrical engineer and physicist . . .”

The same Kostić cites the “American Croatian Glasnik”, which in 1956 under the title “How Serbs falsify Tesla’s origin” brought the following: “This time too the Belgrade rulers wanted our artist Ivan Meštrović to erect a monument to Nikola Tesla in Belgrade, but Meštrović clearly stated that Tesla never felt himself part of Serbia but of Croatia and that a monument to Tesla should be erected in the main city of Croatia, Zagreb or Smiljan in Croatia. Thus the monument, as is heard, will be erected in Zagreb, and not in Belgrade, as the latest communist Greater Serbianism desires.”

Tesla lived for years in the United States of America and was acquainted with numerous people of American cultural, political and public life in general. As such it is surely known from the “fanfare” of his nationality, which was certainly well known to the American people. Although he lived and worked at a time when his homeland Croatia was under the “firm” of Austro-Hungary, yet all scientific publications in America (and especially encyclopedias) treated him as a Croat.

(This went on through the years, and Tesla never protested, nor did he demand that references be corrected and that next to his name be placed as national affiliation: Serb. As far as Tesla’s nationality is concerned, the Croats did not have their finger in it. It came out as Tesla himself suggested. He always emphasized that he was from Croatia, and since he was neither Italian, nor German, nor Hungarian, and his family had no connection whatsoever with Serbia, it is logical that he considered himself a born Croat. Unlike Mihailo Pupin, he never stated or wrote that he is a Serb. And Pupin’s statements were more forced by the “furious patriots”, who circled around the great scholar more for his dollars than for the sake of Serbianism. But he too died disappointed and embittered on “Kosovo revenge-seeking” and Serbianism as many honorable people have.

Tesla’s family is without doubt of Vlach origin, as are numerous Orthodox families throughout Lika. But while those Vlach families, which ethnically have no connection with the Serbs, under the influence of propaganda by Orthodox monks and priests in the past century began to Serbize, and today represent an element of Greater Serbian aspirations on Croatian lands. Nikola Tesla remained outside the reach of that imposed Serbianism, which he knew very well by its negative characteristics. He was an Orthodox from Croatia, as there were numerous prominent people who loved their Croatia, remained faithful to it, and by their Orthodoxy they could just as easily be Bulgarians, Russians or Armenians, as they would be Serbs.

We are not surprised that Mr. Lazo Kostić is angry because of Nikola Tesla, whom American and world encyclopedias rightly do not consider a Serb. This falls into Serbian national appetite, which through Kostić’s friend, the late Jovan Dučić, even proclaimed our great Meštrović a Serb, and that nothing less than the stream of the Serbian “tsar” Uroš. But about that another time.