August Cesarec
Croatian writer
Died when: 47 years 223 days (571 months)Star Sign: Sagittarius
August Cesarec (4 December 1893 – 16 July 1941) was a Croatian writer and communist activist.Cesarec was born in Zagreb, then part of Austria-Hungary.
As a high-school student he became involved in radical nationalist politics and joined the group that tried to assassinate Croatian ban (viceroy) Slavko Cuvaj in 1912.
For his role in the failed assassination he received a prison sentence of two years, which he served in Sremska Mitrovica penitentiary (in present-day Serbia).
There he began to study books by Stirner and Kropotkin, which gradually led him to adopt Marxist philosophy.From 1915 to 1918 he served in the Austro-Hungarian Army, and his experiences of World War I made him into an enthusiastic supporter of the Russian 1917 October Revolution and of Communism.
After the war, he became a member of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.Consequently he often had to deal with police; he emigrated to Prague, Vienna, Moscow and Spain, where he spent some time in 1937 during Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939.
Cesarec, who had discovered his literary talent in his teenage years, became known as one of the leading Croatian literary figures of his time.
He wrote poems, plays, short-stories and novels; and participated in literary magazines run by Miroslav Krleža.In March 1941, a few days before the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia, he was arrested and interned in Kerestinec prison in Croatia, together with some 90 leading members of the Croatian left-wing intelligentsia.
A few weeks later the prison was taken by the new Ustasha regime.On 9 July, the Ustasha had ten prisoners, including Božidar Adžija, Otokar Keršovani and Ognjen Prica, shot in retaliation for Partisan activities.
Fearing the impending execution of the rest of the inmates, the Croatian Communist Party organised a prison-break on the night of 13 July 1941.
The prison guards were overpowered and inmates escaped.But the operation proved poorly organised, and most of the prisoners, including Cesarec, were quickly recaptured and shot in the Maksimir woods a few days later.
