Vladislav F. Ribnikar

Vladislav F. Ribnikar

Vladislav F. Ribnikar (Serbian Cyrillic: Владислав Ф. Рибникар; 13 November 1871 – 1 September 1914) was a Serbian journalist, best known for founding Politika, the oldest Serbian daily. He led the newspaper from the day it was founded in 1904 until his death in combat in 1914.^[1]

Vladislav F. Ribnikar was born in Trstenik, Serbia in 1871 as the eldest son of Dr. Franc Ribnikar, a Slovene physician from Carniola. Vladislav went to school in Jagodina and Belgrade. He studied history of philology at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy from 1888 to 1892, received his master's degree from the Sorbonne in Paris and went to Berlin to study at the Humboldt University on a state scholarship. The coup d’etat in May 1903 which saw the end of the Obrenović dynasty in Serbia stopped him from finishing his Ph.D. The arrival of the Karadjordjevic dynasty to the throne brought democracy and the freedom of the press for the first time in Serbia. Vladislav F. Ribnikar influenced by his experience in France and Germany decided to participate in this new élan by founding the first independent Serbian newspaper.

The idea to create an independent newspaper, without links to any of the political parties, was a novel idea in Serbia. No one thought that an independent newspaper could survive without help from a political party (there were already eleven daily party oriented newspapers at the time). Luckily for Vladislav his wife was ready to invest her personal fortune into the endeavor. Politika was founded in January 1904 and in only a few years managed to become the most important daily in Serbia.

Vladislav stayed at the helm of Politika until his death in 1914. As a reserve officer of the Royal Serbian Army he participated in the 1912–13 Balkan Wars. After the outbreak of the First World War he was once again called back to active duty. He was killed in action on 1 September 1914 on the front in western Serbia, in the Sokolska planina mountain, one day after his youngest brother Darko F. Ribnikar, reserve captain and editor-in-chief of Politika, was killed by an enemy shell.

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