Correspondence with Relatives (English Translation)

Introduction

Being a relative of Nikola Tesla and the closest living member on his mother's side, it is appropriate for me to present a brief background which had a maternal influence on Tesla's upbringing that began in Lika then to Budapest and Paris and finally to America.

He made his most important discoveries and inventions in the United States Discovery of Radio, remote control vehicles, fluid turbines, polyphase elctromagnetic motors and generators, long distance electrical transmission of power are among the 112 patents approved in 25 countries.

His mother Georgina (Djuka) was the daughter of Rev. Nikola T. Mandic (1800-1863) and the granddaughter of Toma Mandic (1777-1840). They were respected citizens and landowners in Lika. She had three sisters and four brothers.

Rev. Toma (married to Masa Obradovic); Staka (married to Rev. Djuro Alagic); Trifun (married to Ama-Lina Ristovic, Anka Rabatic and Katarina Japundjic); Marija (married to Pajo Majstorovic) and Smiljana (married to Toma Obradovic).

Tesla's uncles were relatively wealthy in that part of the country. Pajo was a General Staff Colonel in the Imperial Austro-Hungarian Army. This was quite an achievement for an Orthodox person. Pajo's son Dr.Milan was a well known lawyer in Budapest. However, Milan's sons Pajo and Petar, became Catholics and Petar visited the USA in 1970 as Count Mandic.

Tesla's uncle Trifun was also a wealthy and well known man who had written his letters in Cyrillic Serbian and signed them (they are in my possession). He was a hotelier and landowner.

Trifun, Tesla's second uncle was a well known hotelier and I have letters attesting to this fact. Trifun had three daughters (Beta, Olga and Sofija) and two sons Dr. Petar (1877-1951) who was a well known lawyer in Mostar. The other son Very Rev. Milos (1880-1941) was the Prelate of Lika indicating Trifun's appreciation for education. Dr. Petar's sons Dr. Branislav (1913-1972) completed Law school in Berlin. His other son, my father Vojin (1911-1992) was a graduate of the Sorbonne in Paris. Dr. Petar's oldest daughter finished Philosophy in Geneva Switzerland.

His third uncle, His Eminence, Archbishop of Sarajevo and Metropolitan of Bosnia, Nikolai(Petar-before becoming a priest) together with Col. Pajo and Trifun shared the expenses for Tesla's education in Europe and his expenses for a trip to the USA.

Since Tesla's father Rev. Milutin Tesla was a small parish pries with a low income, the cost of Nikola Tesla's education was supplied by his three uncles-Palo, Trifun and Nikola.

It was often mentioned and claimed that Tesla came to America with a few dollars or cents in his pockets. This is inconsistent with the stories of my grandfather. Tesla was involved in gambling during his youth prior to his departure to America.

His father and uncles had well stocked libraries that helped Tesla learn more as an autodidact than as a formal student in school.

He inherited his inventive proclivity from his mother Djuka, a woman of extraordinary ability. She loved poetry and memorized many poems, not only from her native Serbian language, but,, from all over the world. Serbian poetry was very musical and she would recite while doing chores and young Nikola would listen.

Djuka (1822-1892) had an inventive mind. She had come from a family of inventors. Her father Nikola and her grandfather Toma had inventions to their credit. Tesla marveled at his mother's ability to create new implements out of scrap material. He often said that his mother's ability to create influenced his life as an inventor.

Tesla had said that his mother was an inventor of the first order and would < I believe, have achieved great things had she not been so remote from modern life and its multifold opportunities. She invent and constructed all kinds of tools and devices and wove the finest designs from thread which was spun by her. She even planted the seeds, raised the plants and separated the fibers herself. She worked incessantly from the break of day until late at night. Most of the apparel and furnishings of the home were the product of her hands (My Inventions, Electrical experimenter, May, June, July, October 1919)

Dr. Nenad V. Mandich,
CEO, HBM Chemical Eng. Corp.

Translator's Note: Nenad is the only engineer after Tesla from the Mandich side of the family. He is known as an expert in his field world wide. He has more than 50 papers and a dozen patents.

Forward

The Tesla family has its own special background of culture, history and its own place in the hearts and minds of not only the Serbian and Yugoslav people, but also, many people throughout the world.

Even though they come from one contiguous area known as Lika in western Croatia and of Serb ethnicity, they were primarily weaned on their own experiences, the geography of their domicile initially and later in four other disparate cultures in adulthood- Lika, Vojvodina, Fiume (Rijeka) and America. Nikola Tesla was the intellectual giant in this family, but others, fared almost as well in their respective fields of work and endeavor.

There are some of the highest members of the Orthodox Church who made their mark on history from Archbishop to honored clergymen that included businessmen, scholars and political leaders.

The letters tell us that there was an Archbishop of Sarajevo who comes from Tesla's mother's side of the family (Nikolai Mandich). Others from Djuka Mandic Tesla's family were Trivun, a priest who was the Prelate of Lika. He was killed on the third day of Hitler's invasion of Yugoslavia by the Usatshis in a heinous manner. Then, there is Very Rev. Nikoladin Kosanovic who married Tesla's sister Marica. He died at a rather early age, but, had translated the famous poem by the German poet Schiller, "The Bell" into Serbian. He and Marica and their children spent many years in Rijeka which was part of Italy until WW II. It was known as Fiume. The name means river in either language.

Angelina Trbojevich, Tesla's sister married an Orthodox priest and lived in Petrovo Selo, Lika where he was the parish priest for many years.

She is the mother of Nikola Trbojevic and Pavle who became a monk, Petronius. He was the Abbot of Šišatovac Monastery with three doctorate degrees. She is William H. Terbo's grandmother. William H. Terbo was born in 1930 in Grosse Pointe, Michigan where Nikola worked as an inventor and engineer in the auto industry. Nikola Trbojević had more than 150 patents to his credit.

William H. Terbo lives in New Jersey and in California at the present time. He retired after working as an executive for RCA; then Western Union and finally for MCI. He and Jovan Trbojevich, his cousin, are the only living members of the family in the US on the Tesla side and Dr.Nenad V. Mandich, CEO of HBM Chemical Eng. Corp. and Nebojsa Mandic who are on Tesla's mother's side of the family.

The correspondence is varied due to the commensuratee with the educational level of the correspondents of the letters.

The Serbian language is verbal and highly inflectional with declension and conjugation. There are seven cases of declension and about five conjugational use of verbs.

Unlike English, a sentence can begin with almost any part of speech due to the inflectional nature of the language using paradigms. Therefore, many sentences will begin with verbs and sometimes have what we consider long dangling participles.

Embellishments of ideas, thoughts or activities are usually done with dynamic words such as verbs and not like the English language using mostly static adjectives and their modifiers adverbs, etc.

I tried to keep as close to what they had written including their regional verbiage and sentence structure. Accuracy of ideas was more important than aesthetics in this case.

The Serbian language belongs to the Indo-European language family. It is in the Slavic branch of this family and stems from Old Slavonic that was used about a thousand years ago by all the Slavic speaking peoples.

Nicholas Kosanovich,
Exectuve Sec./ Treasurer, Tesla Memorial Society, Inc.
Translator