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Ethnography of Albanian Mountain Tribes During WWI in the Works of Karel Sellner OPEN ACCESS Robert Dobra

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Ethnography of Albanian Mountain Tribes During WWI in the Works of Karel Sellner OPEN ACCESS Robert Dobra Ethnography of Albanian mountain tribes during WWI in the works of Karel Sellner OPEN ACCESS Robert Dobra ABSTRACT Utilizing both published and archival materials, this paper covers the accounts of Karel Sellner from his stay in northern Albanian mountains during World War I. Primarily, it aims to explore Sellner’s views regarding the local tribal society and to present his respective work, which is connected to both Albanian studies, ethnography and (to a lesser extent) Czech historiography, in regards to the engagement of Czech people in the Austro-Hungarian army during the last days of its existence. Since the author’s original work was written exclusively in Czech, this article also emphasizes direct quotes on the topic from his books, personal correspondence and other archival materials. KEYWORDS Albania, kanun, tribal society, blood feud, ethnography, travelogue, World War 1 Amongst those, who historically brought insights into the life of Northern Albanian mountain tribes were several, who stumbled upon this vast treasury of customs and often romanticised tribal identities by a relative coincidence. In this aspect, Karel Sellner (October 23rd 1873 — February 24th 1955), to whom this paper is dedicated to, is no exception. Sellner was primarily a teacher, writer and educator, who’s inter- ests also extended into amateur archeology and most prominently the field of litera- ture. Over the years of his activity, he published a broad portfolio of educative works mostly related to his home region of Mladá Boleslav situated in Central Bohemia, where he also collected local folk legends1 and, more importantly for the purpose of this paper, also published two works regarding his experiences from Albania later in his life. The first of these two, V tajemné zemi (“In a mysterious land”), was a trav- elogue from his stay in northern Albanian mountains in 1916–1918, which was pub- lished in Prague in 1925 — it was Sellner’s long-term literary affliction, along with the character of his task and the place where he was stationed, that allowed him to extend the usual scope of the accounts provided by most of his fellow soldiers sta- tioned in Albania and bring a much wider set of information pertaining his experi- ences (especially in connection to the population living under the influence of the local customary law, kanun). The second work of his which pertains to this country, Pohádky májových večerů (“Fairytales of May evenings”), is a collection of Sellner’s tales which also incorporates several notes regarding his other experiences from the forementioned period.2 Curiously enough, these are not reproduced tales stemming 1 The summary of Karel Sellner’s archival fond in the The Museum of Czech Literature Liter- ary Archive. Available online (in Czech): http://www.badatelna.eu/fond/2802/uvod/6104 2 Most prominently, Sellner thereby describes an Albanian Catholic school in the village of Zejmen in detail (Sellner 1925b). 84 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 2/2019 OPEN ACCESS Fig. 1 One of the typical fortified towers (kulla) that Sellner depicted. from the local oral tradition but his original works, inspired and based partly on ac- tual northern Albanian folklore and customs and partly on his own experiences. Al- though Sellner’s engagement in this matter could be seen as a one-time effort in the context of his own professional orientation, it is worth considering that he spent a to- tal of almost a year and two months in the northern Albanian mountains, collecting a considerable amount of material, publishing the two forementioned books on the topic and also organizing lectures about Albania in Bohemia during the years follow- ing his return. Notably, his works on Albania remained largely unreflected so far — this is perhaps because the focus of a majority of Sellner’s works was very different to this topic (also, the title of his most comprehensive work relating to Albania does not directly suggest to have any connection to the country, the Balkans or the given era). Sellner’s journey to the northern Albanian mountains began in July 1916, after be- ing drafted to the Austro-Hungarian military and following a several months long stay in a officers’ academy in the Hungarian city of Kecskemét. He first arrived to Albania in April 1917 to serve as a member of a military engineering corps, main task of his unit being to build a road connecting the southern border of today’s Kosovo (by then also occupied by the Austro-Hungarian forces) and the Albanian town of Milot (in a direction almost identical to today’s Rruga e Kombit highway). It was the rather slow-paced progress of the task and several changes of his place of stay that opened roBert DOBra 85 the door for Sellner to widely interact with the indigenous population, that being mainly in the regions of Mirdita and Mat. Substantial part of Sellner’s comrades, many of whom also served in technical roles, were also of Czech origin — leading to OPEN ACCESS the author calling Northern Albanian mountains during the First World War a “small Czech republic” (Sellner, 1925: 29) — indeed, there are many available surviving ac- counts of Czech soldiers serving on the Albanian front of World War 1.3 However, in contrary to Sellner’s work, most of them consist of personal correspondence and other literary works that in most cases reflect solely personal experiences pertain- ing to the war itself (Vinš, 2006). The large number of Czech soldiers, their works and their correspondence sent back to their homeland also served as the first wider chance for the Czechs to gain information about a country only very little known until then in Czech society (Hradečný, Hladký, Pikal, 2010). As Sellner states: „(In Bo- hemia) Albania was, until the Austro-Hungarian occupation in 1916, even less known than the hinterlands of Africa, the Australian desert or the mysterious forests of Brasil“.4 Describing his journey to Albania in spring 1917, Sellner stated that: “the train keeps filling up with new victims of war, and as far as I can tell from the conversations, they are teachers. I now understand the much needed participation of educators in the war. It is not easy to keep us under control back home. The old ones can be silenced and intimidated easily, but the new generation — the Czech one — is very dangerous to the idea of the Austrian state and the whole course of the conflict“ (Sellner, 1925a: 7). While he perceived the reasons for his involuntarily departure as such, it should be noted that in general, military service in Albania was often not perceived as a punishment by Czech soldiers5 — rather than that, they seemingly appreciated that the conditions were not as tense as they were elsewhere on the Balkans front and some of them had even volunteered 3 Several hundreds to several thousands of Czech captives previously serving in the Austro- Hungarian military also perished during the ill-famed retreat of Serbian army towards the Adriatic sea at the end of 1915. Jan Laška, a soldier of Czech origin later to become a legion- naire in Italy and a diplomat, provided a striking account of the events in his book Pochod hladu Albanií (The March of Hunger Through Albania) published in 1920. Another such account of these events was also provided by Rudolf Procházka in his book V srbském za- jetí — o životě v Niši a na útěku Albanií 1914–1915 (In Serbian Captivity — about the life in Niš and escape to Albania 1914–1915). 4 Regarding his own perception of Albania before the war, Sellner mentions reading several romantic novels pertaining to the region from various authors and also news articles pub- lished in the Czech media regarding to the Balkan Wars. Other than that, he claims “pre- viously knowing almost nothing at all” (Sellner 1925a: 22). 5 The number of Czechs on the Albanian front is a matter seldom reflected and might also spark another question, pertaining to how Austro-Hungarian military command suppos- edly did not trust the Czech element — to the extent of showing a tendency to station reg- ular soldiers of Czech origin somewhere, where the course of war could not be directly influenced by their nationalist tendencies and brotherly feelings towards the Slavic en- emy (that potentially being the Albanian and also Italian front). Nevertheless, the myth pertaining to this phenomenon, which tells of often deserting, sabotaging and cowardous Czech soldier in Austro-Hungarian service has already been largely proved to be largely misleading (Fučík, 2006). 86 STUDIA ETHNOLOGICA PRAGENSIA 2/2019 to be stationed in the country (Vinš, 2006). As Sellner himself later states: „One can live fairly well in Albania. The service is not perilous, but there is still danger. The mountain OPEN tribes are wild and still cannot cope with the Austrian occupation. The boys take pleasure ACCESS in the fact that they can stay out of things. They live the way the want to and they arrange for themselves as if they were at home“. The information that Sellner provides in his accounts from the year and two months spent in northern Albanian mountains is of a relatively wide scope, and per- tains not only to local historical and political kind of information, but also both to certain kind of auto-biography (regarding the life of his and his comrades) and to a certain kind of a soldier’s ethnography. While it may not be unusual that an indi- vidual participating in a conflict brings information pertaining to the culture and life of the local (indigenous) population, in the case of Albania during the World War I, this seems to be a rather rare occurrence, given that not many such sources were brought to light until this day.
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