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Dinaric Superman
I came across this while researching what the Dinaric race is.
“We, the Yugoslav Barbarians!” The Rhetoric of Anti-
Civilization and the Dinaric Superman
The well-known interwar Yugoslav ethnographer Vladimir Dvorni-
kovic (1888–1950) commented that the Yugoslavs as a race were “one
of the most naturally gifted peoples of Europe,” leading “all other peo-
ples in brain size.”33 Moreover, as a synthesis of the three Yugoslav
tribes, Dvornikovic found that the Yugoslav man possessed “dynamism,
rhythm, strong temperament, expressiveness and the constructive ability
of fantasy.”34 Dvornikovic was one of many ethnologists and anthro-
pologists at the time who believed that the Yugoslavs constituted a race.
In his massive study of 1939, the extensive sociological study of the
peoples of Yugoslavia, Karakterologija Jugoslovena (The Characte-
riology of the Yugoslav), the author combined poetry, folklore, ballads,
geography, as well as the most modern eugenicist and racial think-
ing—including, inevitably, much writing on race and nation that had
proved popular with the Nazis—to produce a prototype of the ideal
Yugoslav man and woman. The purest expression of the “Yugoslav
race” was to be found, he argued, in the rocky Dinaric region, inhabit-
ed by the “Dinaric race.” The idea of a Dinaric race was not new, hav-
ing been championed by Jovan Cvijic at least as far back as the turn of
the century; indeed, much as the book was influenced by the precepts
of racial biology, in many ways it could also be seen as a recapitula-
tion of many of Cvijic’s ideas and theories. According to Cvijic in one
of his last articles of 1930, the Dinaric people were “young, full-blood-ed and keenly alive to natural phenomena.” He also believed that they
were full of “kindness, good feeling, a sense of justice and a readiness
to sacrifice themselves both as a nation and as individuals.” The most
characteristic feature of the Dinaric region was the presence of “force-
ful, violent and fiery men in whom the most unrestrained qualities of
the race find their highest form of development. They are impulsive
and act without any consideration.” Sometimes sentimental, among
them existed, nonetheless, men who “think nothing of sacrificing their
lives for moral ideas or for the benefit of the race.”35
Dvornikovic focused extensively on the Dinaric peoples, lauding
them as a prototype for the future Yugoslav person. For Dvornikovic,
the manliness and virility of the Dinaric man was unsurpassed not only
in the South Slav region but throughout Europe: “The Dinaric type is
the prototype of the male warrior, perhaps the most outstanding amongst
all the white races: his ideas embody this type (…). This Illyrian man
must be raw, strong and martial. The violence, which is constantly re-
marked upon when one talks about the Dinarics, emerges in the Illyrian
in an even more elemental form (…). A. Geljan writes that the look of
the Illyrian is so terrible and fascinating that it could ‘kill a man’.”36
At the same time, however, this did not imply that the “Dinaric man”
was a primitive brute. On the contrary, the epic poems of the South
Slavs lauded the Hajduks, the feared brigands and highwaymen in the
Balkans who had terrorized and robbed travelers. Their spirit was cap-
tured by the “Dinarics” as the “idol and only hope of an enslaved
nation,” demonstrating the psychic connection they enjoyed with the
people and with the land.
Dvornikovic argued that many of those who wrote about the “Dina-
rics” were anthropologists who had failed to enter their world; yet
without such direct experience of their “patriarchal morals and ethical
ideals” they could never hope to understand the “Dinarics.” Those who
spoke only of their plundering and thievery had not properly compre-
hended the soul of the “Dinarics” any more than “the superficial foreign
tourists for whom the people are no more than thieves. Some of our
writers are ‘western’, alien to these people: it is as if they had never
experienced his world.” Dvornikovic further pointed out that, despite
the patriarchal and heroic social milieu from which the “Dinaric man”
emerged, “Dinaric women” were far from submissive and displayed
the Amazonian qualities that one might expect in the female compan-
ion of the “Dinaric warrior.” The “Dinaric woman” had masculine ten-dencies and a “masculine aura.”37 In any case, the author believed
that the brutal living style of this warrior prevented any form of “altru-
istic sentimentality and the feelings of consideration towards others.”
Although a disposition to strong feelings was expressed in many
“symbols and forms of national life, in certain traditions and supersti-
tions, national poems, proverbs and sayings,” the style of “Dinaric”
life, especially in the southern regions, restricted the range of these
feelings to “a hard and rudimentary form.” The “Dinaric race” thus
remained fundamentally warlike and pagan, “a warrior of the Balkan,
not Slav-Christian soul.”38
Other ethnologists embraced the idea of the “Dinaric man” as the
prototype for a “Yugoslav superman,” including the ethnologist and
government physician Branimir Malesˇ. For him, the “Dinaric man”
was far superior to his European counterparts. In fact, Malesˇ character-
ized the “Dinaric man” in a similar manner to Dvornikovic. He argued
that the “Dinaric man” was an independent and unique racial type, re-
lated neither to “Alpine” nor to “Nordic” racial types. In 1935, Malesˇ
declared: “All his characteristics are exclusively Dinaric, harmonious-
ly joined and constituting one biological essence.”39 For this ethnolo-
gist, the key to the racial uniqueness of the “Dinaric man” was to be
found in his body shape and skull formation. The skull shapes and
bodies of the Alpine and Nordic races were allegedly completely dif-
ferent to those of the “Dinaric race,” as was their temporal and frontal
lobes. Unlike the round faces and short stature of the Alpine race,
Malesˇ explained, the long face of the “Dinaric” person was in com-
plete harmony with his “long body and all other body parts.” In addi-
tion, he rejected the contention of some anthropologists and writers
that the “Dinaric race” was either a genus of the central “Armenian-
Alpine race” or a combination of the “Armenian” and “Nordic” races.
It was erroneous, he continued, to group together all those with brachy-
cephalic skulls and dark complexions, and worse still to group the
“Dinaric race” with the “Alpine race (…) and with American Indians
and Asiatic Mongols, part of the great yellow racial group.”40
Given the dark hair and long bodies of the majority of the “Dina-
rics,” Malesˇ also argued that there was a variant of “Dinarics” with
blond hair (Blond Dinarics). This also set them apart from the “Alpine
race,” among whom blond hair was almost unknown. In Yugoslav
regions, he wrote, it was common to find people with red or blond hair
and blue eyes. Despite this “all their other features, both morphologi-cal and physiological, are purely Dinaric.” Malesˇ’s fieldwork in
Montenegro had shown that this phenomenon was actually quite com-
mon. Although he could not say with any certainty whether the “blond
Dinarics” were a special species or a variant of the prototype “Dinaric”
racial type, there was no doubt in his mind that they were related. This
was proved, he insisted, by the fact that many blond “Dinaric” children
became darker as they grew older. It remained to be seen whether both
dark-haired “Dinarics” and blond “Dinarics” were related to the
Nordic group. However, it was beyond doubt to Malesˇ that the
“Dinarics” were closer to the “Nordic race” than any other “European
race.”41
In some respects, the popularity of the theory of a “Dinaric race”
among a certain strata of intellectuals and academics reflected the
desire—common throughout Europe, especially in the interwar peri-
od—to give notions about national identity a scientific basis and there-
fore a grounding in “fact.” If academic and scientific enquiry could
prove the existence of a Yugoslav race and, moreover, one that had
existed long before the establishment of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia,
then who could oppose a union of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes? It
also reflected the belief, prevalent among a largely urbanized national-
ist élite throughout Europe, that the “authentic” culture of the nation
was to be found in villages, among the peasants, rather than in cities.
Indeed, as Svetislav Stefanovic noted, “while the city demonstrated
great interest in the folklore and clothes [of the village], it did not seem
so interested in its life and health, its births and deaths, its homes and
families.”42 On the other hand, it was also symptomatic of the general
faith in the capability of science and technology to advance social
progress and address national and social problems. For example, in a
1933 study assessing the health of adolescent “Dinaric” girls in villages
and towns in Belgrade and its surrounding villages, Malesˇ used scien-
tific means to establish which girls should be excluded from the survey
on the basis of their “non-Dinaric anthropological characteristics.”
This included examining the shape of their faces and heads, inspecting
coloring and complexion, as well as measuring their height.43
Dvornikovic and Malesˇ were joined in their investigations into the
“Dinaric race” by other anthropologists and scientists, who spent much
of the 1920s and 1930s analyzing the racial characteristics, as well as
the culture, music, clothes, language, folklore and religion, of various
ethnic groups in Yugoslavia, especially those communities living in the frontier regions of the new state and those just outside its borders.
Many of these studies amounted to more than just the accumulation of
anthropological knowledge, and had a clear political agenda. Through
such studies, writers aimed not only to provide a scientific basis for the
Yugoslav race, but also to legitimate Yugoslavia’s claim to territories
currently under dispute.44
Despite the faith in science and technology shared by many Yugo-
slav racial anthropologists—a faith exemplified by the theory of
“Dinaric” racial origins—this does not mean that they accepted all,
or even most, of the values of the modern society from which many
eugenic principles had originated. On the contrary, at the same time as
they appropriated many of the racial ideas of modern European socie-
ty, Yugoslav racial anthropologists simultaneously rejected many of its
other supposed values. In particular, they opposed what they perceived
to be the soulless nature of the “West”—embodied in its urban capital-
ist system—with the heroism and humanity of the eastern Slavs. Dvor-
nikovic, for one, not only eulogized the East and envisioned a mes-
sianic calling of the Slavs as an alternative to the excessive rationalism
of the West, but also held that the Slavs could save the West from degen-
eration and decay. In Dvornikovic’s case, the embracing of “Dinaric”
racial theory reflected his belief that the “Dinaric man” was a Balkan
superman, virile and energetic, who could racially revive a torpid and
exhausted Europe. An important element of this belief structure was a
rejection of the supposedly civilized values of the West in favor of
what was assumed as distinctly Balkan, particularly its alleged sav-
agery, wild instincts and aggressiveness. This was a view shared by a
sizeable intellectual constituency in Yugoslavia. Such hostility towards
the cultural superiority of Europe was encapsulated in a memorable
verse from the poem Na Kale-Mejdanu (At Kalemegdan) by the Slo-
venian poet Anton Asˇkerc (1856–1912): “Thus we protected you,
Europe/ from the blows of wild hordes/ Ah, thus we spent our youth, /
we—the Yugoslav barbarians!”45
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Originally Posted by Ushtari
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