- Lavo Čermelj
Lavo Čermelj, Italianized in "Lavo Cermeli" (
October 10 1889 -January 26 1980 ) was a Slovenephysicist ,political activist ,publicist and author.Life
Lavo Čermelj was born in
Trieste , then part of theAustro-Hungarian Empire . After finishing theGerman language lyceum in his native town, he enrolled to theCharles University inPrague , where he studied law for one year. He then switched to theUniversity of Vienna , where he studied mathematics and physics, graduating from physics in 1914. DuringWorld War One he was drafted in theAustro-Hungarian Army . After the war he returned to Trieste, then already part of the Kingdom of Italy, where he worked as a professor at a privateSlovene language high school. In the late 1920s he collaborated with several underground organizations that were resisting the policies ofFascist Italianization in theJulian March . When his activities were traced by the Italian Fascist secret police, he illegally emigrated to theKingdom of Yugoslavia . He settled inLjubljana , and got employed at theBežigrad Grammar School .In the early 1930s, he started actively working as a researcher at the
Minority Institute in Ljubljana, a private institution establsihed to study the position of Slovene minortites in Italy, Austria and Hungary. In 1935, he published the monograph "Life - and - death Struggle of a National Minority: the Yugoslavs in Italy", in which he described the persecution of theSlovenes andCroats in theJulian March and in theVenetian Slovenia . The book was later translated into French, German, Italian and Russian, becoming a referential work on the subject.When the Italian army occupied the so-called
Province of Ljubljana after theinvasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Čermelj was arrested by the Italian authorities and trialed at theSecond Trieste trial . He was sentenced to death, but the convistion was later converted to life imprisoment. He was sent to the maximum security prision on the island ofElba . In 1944 he was released by the Allied troops and joined theYugoslav partisans . AfterWorld War Two , he collaborated as an expert for the Yugoslav foreign ministry, and after 1947 he dedicated himself mostly to the study of the legal position of theSlovene minority in Italy .Čermelj also wrote several books and articles for the popularization of science.
He died in
Ljubljana .External links
* [http://www.spletna-knjigarna.si/default.cfm?Jezik=Sl&Kat=041201&Artikel=2267&ProdID=2267&Quantity=1 Bibliography]
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