The renaming of Dubrovnik's airport has ignited a new ethnic row between Croats and Serbs, this time over the ancestry of one of Croatia's most prominent scholars.
Following an airport renaming this month, flights to the Adriatic city now land at Rugjer Bošković Airport, named after an 18th-century astronomer, mathematician and scholar.
Also known as Ruggiero Giuseppe Boshkovich to Italians, or in the English translation of his name, Roger Joseph Boscovich, he described a single law governing natural forces, a precursor to the atomic theory, and proved the absence of an atmosphere on the Moon.
Dubrovnik was known as Ragusa when Boshkovich was born in the self-governing republic in 1711. His mother was Italian and he left for Rome at the age of 14 to pursue his education and then his career.
However, it is the identity and origin of his father that is now being questioned. In general, religious choices and affiliations made centuries ago have solidified into ethnic identity: Catholics into Croats, Orthodox Christians into Serbs, and Muslims into Bosniaks.
Nikola Bošković was a Ragusan merchant from the village of Orahov Do, in the mountains above Dubrovnik. That village now lies in the Serb-run half of Bosnia known as the Republika Srpska. The separatist leaders of this entity want to build their own airport in Trebinje, not far from Orahov Do, and want to name it after Ruger Boshkovic. Their argument is that Nikola Boshkovic and his clan were Serbs before they converted to Catholicism.
Serbian scholars argue that Nikola's conversion was purely transactional and was done so that he could marry a girl from a Catholic family in Ragusa or continue his career, and therefore did not change the family's essential Serbian identity.
Former Serbian president Boris Tadić described Bošković as a "Serbian Catholic".
Danilo Kovač, historian at the Sapienza University of Rome, has said: "When examining the issue of Bošković's ethnic origins, it is important to acknowledge that the concept of national identities had different meanings during the time of his predecessors."
Referring to the works of Serbian and Montenegrin scholars who argue that the family was essentially Serbian, he added that: "Historical records definitely prove that Nikola visited and described Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries in Kosovo."
Ivan Maslaq, commercial director of Dubrovnik airport, rejected such claims.
"The naming of the airport is our job, and of course we will not ask anyone about it," he emphasized, according to Slobodna Bosna newspaper. "Of course, Rugjer Boshkovic is not a Serb".
Domagoj Vidović, a linguist at the Institute of Croatian Language and Linguistics, who did a study on Orahov Do, said: "Rugjer Bošković's uncle was a Catholic priest, Don Ilija Boškovi. Until the beginning of the 20th century, no Orthodox Christians lived in Orahov Do. The Catholic origins of Bošković date back more than 400 years. There is evidence for this in the reports, registers and records in the diocese".
But such quarrels for scholars are nothing new. In 2006, Serbia named Belgrade's airport after Nikola Tesla, the famous inventor. Tesla was a Serb born in the mid-19th century village of Smiljan, on the military border of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and what is now Croatia.
Even though he barely set foot in today's Serbia, Belgrade claims Tesla as its own. His ashes are in a museum in Belgrade and the Serbian Orthodox Church has campaigned to have them moved to a cathedral, despite his views on religion. Serbia reacted when Croatia put the inventor's face on its 50, 20 and 10 cent coins when it joined the Eurozone earlier this year.
The National Bank of Serbia told "AFP" that by doing this, Zagreb "was usurping the cultural and scientific heritage of the Serbian people".
Tesla, who became an American citizen, would probably have been horrified by the arguments.
"I am equally proud of my Serbian origin and my Croatian homeland. Long live all Yugoslavs", he once said. / The Guardian
