Ćiro Truhelka

Ćiro Truhelka (2 February 1865 in Osijek – 18 September 1942 in Zagreb) was a Croatian archaeologist and one of the main progenitors of the racist ideology of the Croatian fascist Ustaše movement.

Truhelka finished grade school and gymnasium in Osijek and went to university in Zagreb. He was the first custodian of the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He coined the name bosančica for Bosnian Cyrillic. In March 1939 Truhelka was the president of Društvo bosansko-hercegovačkih Hrvata u Zagrebu (Society of the Bosnia-Herzegovinian Croats in Zagreb). Truhelka claimed that Bosnian Muslims were ethnic Croats, who, according to him, belonged to the racially superior Nordic race. On the other hand, Serbs belonged to the degenerate race of the Vlachs, similar to the Jews and Armenians.

Truhelka made many important findings about pre-Ottoman Bosnia and Herzegovina. In Prozor-Rama he verified the legend of Grabovac's Virgin (Diva Grabovčeva) when he recovered the remains of a young woman from the 16th or 17th century. In 1888, Truhelka excavated the alleged remains of king Stjepan Tomašević, which are now housed in the Franciscan monastery in Jajce.

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