Kvaternik, Eugen

Born Oct. 31, 1825, in Zagreb; died Oct. 11, 1871, in Rakovica. Croatian political figure, lawyer, and publicist. Son of a professor.

Kvaternik studied law and education in Pest in 1844–46. He lived as an émigré (1857–60 and 1863–67), first in Russia and then in France and Italy; he sought to obtain the support of those states for the struggle against the Hapsburgs. In the late 1860’s he helped to organize the Croatian radical bourgeois Party of Law. In the writings Croatia and the Italian Confederation (1859) and Political Research (1861–62), he justified the right of Croatia to national sovereignty and advocated the unification of Croatian lands within an independent Croatian state. The gradual elimination of the remnants of feudalism in Croatia and the comprehensive economic development of the country were the basic demands of his economic and social program. He collaborated with G. Garibaldi and Polish, Hungarian, and Czech revolutionaries in exile. In October 1871 he stirred up an anti-Hapsburg uprising on the territory of the Military Frontier and was killed.