Memorial plaque unveiled at 71/73 Rue des Saints-Pères in Paris marking 175th birth anniversary of Croatian scientist, historian, codifier and corresponding French Institute member Baltazar Bogišić

In that house, owned by the great botanist Augustin Sageret, Bogišić lived from 1876 until 1907 and wrote most of his scientific works

In that house, owned by the great botanist Augustin Sageret, Bogišić lived from 1876 until 1907 and wrote most of his scientific works. Present at the ceremony on behalf of the Croatian Embassy in Paris was Ambassador Mirko Galić and on behalf of HAZU academic Franjo Šanjek and curator and director of Baltazar Bogišić collection in Cavtat Stane Đivanović, as well as representatives of French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences and the French-Croatian political, cultural and economic circles.

Baltazar Bogišić was born in Cavtat December 20th 1843. He obtained a PhD in philosophy from the University of Giessen (1862) and a PhD in law from the University of Vienna (1862). In 1869 he was appointed law professor at the University of Odessa. He was the cofounder of the Yugoslavian Academy of Sciences and Arts (JAZU) and fathered the 1888 Montenegrin Civil Code, in which he implanted positive law into customs, including the European civilization and science, which earned him international reputation. In 1893 he became the justice minister of the Principality of Montenegro, after which he returned to Paris in 1899 to continue with his works. He passed away April 24th 1908 in Rijeka, on his way to his birthplace.

An exceptional individual, an esteemed European and polyhistorian of his time, a great of Croatian and South Slavic legal history and a collector, Bogišić became January 7th 1888 a corresponding member of the French Institute’s Academy of Moral and Political Sciences (class: legislature, public and case law). He was also one of the oldest members of the Comparative Law Association and the International Institute of Sociology, as well as a member of numerous other academic societies. The French Ministry of Education and Arts appointed him in 1883 its official, while in 1893 French president Sadi Carnot presented him the Legion of Honour (Komtur).

Two international scientific gatherings were held in 2008 on his 100th death anniversary – the first one in Rijeka and Cavtat, the second in Zagreb, Cavtat and Montenegro. In his mother institution, a memorial exhibition and a museologic aspect of the culture of remembrance are being prepared, to be opened in September 2010.

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