Vidovic, Zarko

1. Entity type Person
2. Birth date 17 May 1921
3. Death date 18 May 2016
4. Birth place Tesanj
5. Death place Belgrade
6. Gender Name Male
7. Biographical Data

   1. Zarko Vidovic was born in Tesnjar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on May 17^th in 1921.

      Initially, he studied medicine but left the University. Then he studied history of philosophy and history of arts and graduated in 1952. He defended his doctoral dissertation in 1958 in Belgrade.

      Upon the breakup of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and establishment of the Independent State of Croatia, he was arrested in Sarajevo in 1942. He was transported from Sarajevo prison to the concentration camp of Jasenovac (8–17^th of May, 1942) so as to be sent to the camp in Germany later, and then to a labor camp in Norway. In 1943, he managed to escape from Norway to Sweden, which helped the camp refugees. There, he got scholarship and studied at the University in Uppsala in 1945.

      Upon the return to his homeland, in 1945, suspected for having been a scholarship holder of the King of Sweden, he was arrested by communists. He was held in several prisons until 1947 when he was finally liberated because the communist regime could have found no evidence against him.

      Due to the war, detainment in Nazi concentration camps, and then communist prisons, he completed repeatedly interrupted studies at the University of Belgrade in the period from 1948 to 1952. During studies, in the hard post-war times, he supported his living by being a translator in the publishing houses, and an art critic in the newspapers.

      After completing his studies at the Department of Philosophy, and then at the Department of History of Art, he got employment in Sarajevo as an Assistant Lecturer at the Department of History of Art in 1953.

      He defended his doctoral thesis “Mestrovic and the Contemporary Conflict of a Sculptor with Architecture” at the Faculty of Philosophy University of Belgrade in 1958.

      Until 1961, he taught History of Civilization as an Assistant Professor, and then as Associate and Full Professor at the University of Sarajevo.

      Due to political pressures, in 1961 he had to leave the University of Sarajevo and move to Zagreb where he taught History of Civilization. In 1967, he was exiled from Zagreb because of the public resistance to aggressive stance of Croatian nationalism and Serbophobia spreading.

      In 1969, he moved to Belgrade and started to work at the Institute for Literature and Arts where he was employed until retirement in 1986.

      Together with Amfilohije Radovic and Atanasije Jevtic, who were hieromonks then, he participated in the first discussions with Marxists at the beginning of the eighties in Belgrade.

      He is one of the few philosophers who cherish Christian worldview. He has profoundly influenced the whole generation of Orthodox thinkers that has followed him in perception of philosophy and history of Serbian nation which can be summed into two words: Serbian testament.  

      In the times of lost ideals when all the values were shaken to roots, the work of Zarko Vidovic reveals the true Serbian identity – first religious and then national.  

      As an Orthodox philosopher he consistently implied that only liturgical encounter and communion is possible with God and that man is the creation of love and freedom.

      After the retirement, he continued to live in Belgrade. On October 7^th in 2015, he was awarded the Order of Saint Sava of the Second Degree.

      Zarko Vidovic, one of the greatest Orthodox thinkers in Serbia, died on May 18^th in 2016 in Belgrade.