Miroslav Krleža

Miroslav Krleža was born in Zagreb in 1893, where he died in 1981. He is considered one of the most important Croatian authors. During the interwar period he was editor of several journals, after 1945 temporarily president of the Yugoslav Writers’ Union, member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and director of the Lexicographical Institute in Zagreb. Krleža was a poet, storyteller, playwright and essayist and exerted great influence both in literary-aesthetic and political-social circles. At the Third Yugoslav Writers’ Congress in 1952, Krleža effectively advocated the primacy of art over any ideology.