Mihajlo Rostohar

Mihajlo Rostohar (July 30, 1878 – August 5, 1966) was a Slovenian psychologist, author and educator, who played an important role during the creation of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. Together with Ivan Hribar and Danilo Majaron, he had a crucial role in the establishment of the University of Ljubljana.

He was born in a peasant family in Brege near Krško, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Duchy of Carniola. He attended high school (gymnasium) in Ljubljana and Kranj. He studied philosophy at the University of Graz with Alexius Meinong and later in Vienna, where he graduated in 1905. After working for a year as a supplementary high school teacher in Villach, he decided to pursue an academic career, following the advice of the Austrian philosopher Friedrich Jodl. He continued his studies in Prague, Leipzig (under the supervision of Wilhelm Wundt), Halle and Berlin. He obtained his habilitation at the Charles University of Prague.

After participating in the Italian campaign during World War I, he was involved in the formation of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs in 1918. In 1919, he moved to Czechoslovakia, where he continued his academic career. After the Nazi German takeover of Bohemia and Moravia in 1939, he returned to Slovenia. After World War Two, he went back to Czechoslovakia, but returned to Yugoslavia in 1948.

He died in Golek near Krško in Slovenia.

An elementary school in Krško is named after him.

Political career

Rostohar was active in the Slovene public life. Together with many other Slovene students from Prague, he helped introducing the political and social thought of Tomáš G. Masaryk to the Slovene Lands. He was close to progressive ideas, but unlike many other Slovene followers of Masaryk, he did not join the Social democratic party, but moved closer to national liberal positions.

During the First Balkan War, he publicly supported the idea of an autonomous Albania, with similar arguments as the Austria-Hungarian diplomacy. Because of this, he was attacked by the Slovene language press. In Rostohar's defense, the writer Ivan Cankar produced his famous lecture Slovenes and Yugoslavs, delivered in Ljubljana in 1913.

At the end of First World War there were numerous military units of the Army of Austria-Hungary on the territory of the Duchy of Carniola. Many of these soldiers and officers were Slovenians. During October 1918 there were mass desertions among them. On October 28, 1918 members of the Slovenian National council gathered in the hotel Union and agreed to organize a political rally on Congress Square for the next day. Despite the fact that soldiers and officers were not allowed to participate in the rally on October 29, 1918, around 200 soldiers and officers were in the crowd. Mihajlo Rostohar climbed to the balcony, where leaders of the rally spoke to the gathered people, and shouted:

“We soldiers renounce Austria and swear obedience to the state of our nation, to Yugoslavia!”

Then, on the night between October 29 and 30 1918, he gathered some other Slovenian soldiers and officers, and also soldiers and officers from the 53rd regiment from Zagreb who got off the train that was transporting them through Ljubljana and joined them. Together with prisoners of war from Serbia and Russia they had liberated, there were around 600 of them. Rostohar used them to surround the barracks in Kodeljevo and disarm a battalion of the Austro-Hungarian army from Hungary on the same night.

After the first success in taking over control of the Ljubljana, Slovenian officers and soldiers were very much afraid of the army under control of the Austro-Hungarian field marshal Svetozar Borojević. Therefore, Rostohar organized Slovenian officers to prepare flyers printed in different languages to invite soldiers under command of Svetozar Borojević to go peacefully home, and not to start conflicts. Those activities helped in the peaceful take over of the control of Ljubljana.

Psychologist career

Rostohar studied in Vienna and Graz under professor Alexius Meinong, and he received his PhD in Vienna in 1906 after defending his thesis — Über die Hypothese. Ihre wissenschaftliche Bedeutung. (About the hypothesis. Its scientific importance.). He also studied in Prague where he started teaching in 1911 in Prague as associate professor at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, after he defended his work on logic — Theory of Hypothetical Judgement in 1910. In 1919 he was one of the initiators for establishing the University of Ljubljana. He drew up the first statute of the University and made plans for establishing the Psychological Institute in Slovenia. Despite all those activities he was not elected a professor. Therefore, he left Ljubljana and started teaching in Brno at Masaryk University until 1939 and after Second World War till 1948. From 1948 he taught at the University of Ljubljana as head of the Psychology department. He was author of many works published in Czech, German, French, Serbo-Croatian and Slovenian.

Rostohar used his professional education to analyze the moral meaning of nation. He believed that the core of nationality is the awareness of belonging and the feeling that such awareness generates.

• Uvod v znanstveno mišljenje (1910)
• Theorie hypotetickeho soudu (1910) - Theory of Hypothetical Judgement
• Nationality and its moral significance (1913)
• Za novi socializem (1923)
• Studiez vyvojové psyhologie. Dil 1 (1928)
• Psychologcké zaklady počatečniho čteni s praktickym návodem ke čteni (1934)
• Psyhologie sociàlni (1948)
• Psychopatologie (1948)
• Psychologie jako veda o subjektivni skotečnosti (1950)
• Obča psiholgija (1951)
• Socialna psihologija (1952)
• Pedopsihologija (1953)
• Osnove obče psihologije (1964)
• Osnove socialne psihologije(1965)
• Psihologija (1966)