Adam Pribićević

Adam Pribićević
Adam Pribićević in the 1920s
Born	(1880-12-24)24 December 1880 Kostajnica, Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, Austria-Hungary
Died	7 February 1957(1957-02-07) (aged 76) Windsor, Ontario, Canada

Adam Pribićević (Serbian Cyrillic: Адам Прибићевић; 24 December 1880 – 7 February 1957) was a Serbian publisher, writer, and politician. He had three brothers: Milan, Valerijan and Svetozar.

Pribićević was born in Kostajnica, to a well-known family of Serbs of Croatia. After graduating from gymnasium (high school) in Sremski Karlovci, he studied law at Zagreb. He began his political activities by joining the Srpska Samostalna Stranka (Independent Serbian Party). He published articles in the periodicals Srbobran and Srpsko kolo. A supporter of the social philosophy of Tomáš Masaryk, Adam emphasized the role of peasants in the social development of Serbia. Along with a group of Serbian politicians from Croatia, Adam was arrested during a mounting conflict between the Croatian-Serbian Coalition and the Austro-Hungarian authorities. The annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908 caused furor among the Serbs of Austria-Hungary. It became a major factor in the high-treason trial of Zagreb in 1909 against the Serb leaders of the Croat-Serb Coalition, which opposed the annexation. Adam and his brother Valerijan Pribićević, a Serbian Orthodox bishop, figured prominently among the defendants. On 9 October 1909, the court in Zagreb passed its sentence: twelve years penal servitude for the brothers and severe terms of imprisonment of between five and eight years for thirty other defendants. Following a subsequent libel suit in Vienna, they were all fully exonerated in a legal sense a year later (1910), and it became apparent that the evidence in the earlier trial had been fabricated with the foreknowledge of the Austro-Hungarian authorities.