Mate Meštrović

Mate (Matthew) Meštrović is an American journalist and academic, Croatian lobbyist, politician and ambassador. He is the son of the renowned Croatian and American sculptor Ivan Meštrović.

He attended grade school in Zagreb before his family moved to Italy in 1942.^{[citation needed]} The family lived in Switzerland from 1943 to 1946 where he finished 'Ecole Internationale de Genève.^{[citation needed]} The family moved to the United States of America the following year where his father continued his work as an artist and where Mate would spend most of his life.

He graduated from university in 1951 and the following year received a Master's degree in history at the University of Syracuse.^{[citation needed]} From 1954 to 1956 Dr. Meštrović served as a lieutenant in the US Army PsyWar in the Pacific and is also a Korean War veteran.^{[citation needed]} He earned a PhD from Columbia University in 1957.^{[citation needed]} He worked as a Contributing Editor of TIME^{[citation needed]} and wrote many articles for American and European newspapers and magazines, including Commonweal, The New Leader, the North American Alliance news syndicate, “The Intelligence Report" of The Economist, etc.^{[citation needed]} He taught as professor of Modern European history at New Jersey's Fairleigh Dickinson University and other US universities from 1968 to the Croatian independence in 1991.^{[citation needed]}

In 1986 he was awarded the prestigious Ellis Island Medal of Honor, together with such outstanding leaders as Gerald Ford, Madeleine Albright, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henri Kissinger, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Hillary Clinton, etc.^{[citation needed]}

Mate (Matthew) Meštrović was active for the cause of Croatian independence during its time in Communist Yugoslavia. Meštrović led the Croatian Academy of America.^{[1][dead link]} He visited Communist Yugoslavia for the first time in 1969.^[1] During this visit he made contacts with members of Hrvatski književni list and Matica hrvatska.^{[1][dead link]} From 1982 to 1990 he served as president of the Croatian National Council, an umbrella group of Croatian emigrant organizations which lobbied for Croatian independence.^[2] He lobbied on behalf of Croatian self-determination in Washington, Western Europe and Australia . In this capacity he was received by and Germany’s President Dr. Richard von Weizsäcker, the State Department, Quai d’Orsay, European Parliament, the British Foreign Office, etc.^{[citation needed]}

Matthew Meštrović is the author of several books in English and Croatian, notably What you should know about Communism and why?, The struggle for Croatia and In the whirlpool of Croatian Politics. He published in the US Dr. Franjo Tudjman’s book Nationalism in Contemporary Europe and Venko Markovski’s Goli Otok – The Island of Death, etc. He authored several political tracts, notably Violations of Human and National Rights of the Croatian People in Yugoslavia and Croatian Response to the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Science and Art.^{[citation needed]}

Meštrović returned to Croatia upon its independence. Dr. Meštrović was a deputy in the Croatian Parliament (1993–1997)^{[citation needed]}, member of Croatia’s delegation to the Council of Europe and the Inter parliamentary Union^{[citation needed]} and ambassador in Bulgaria(1997–2000)^{[citation needed]}. He is the recipient of several Croatian and Bulgarian decorations. Because of his father's, and his own political anticommunist beliefs and commitment to freedom, he was declared Enemy Number One of the Yugoslav State and a top CIA agent.^{[citation needed]}

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c} CIA agents against Yugoslavia
2. ^ Hrvatska Politička Emigracija I Hrvatska Država

References

• Letter to a friend in blue mountains, Zlatko Tomičić
• http://assembly.coe.int/ASP/AssemblyList/ALMemberDetails.asp?MemberID=3874
• http://www.nybooks.com/articles/6208
• http://www.hungarian-history.hu/lib/bors/bors25.htm
• http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-6779(197212)31:4%3C930:HISDSR%3E2.0.CO;2-U
• http://www.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/xindex.pl?keyword=Mestrovic
• http://www.neco.org/awards/recipients/index2.html#m
• http://www.studiacroatica.org/revistas/101/1010801.htm
• http://www.knjiga.hr/04.asp?ID=13390&param=u
• http://hrvatska.poslovniforum.hr/nn-arhiva/00016/016ee.asp
• http://www.croatians.com/BIOGRAPHY-AMERICA-K-R.htm

Diplomatic posts
Preceded by Neven Jurica	0Ambassador of Croatia to Bulgaria0 1997–1999	Succeeded by Tonči Staničić

Persondata
Name	Mestrovic, Mate
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1930
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death