Petar Kocic (1877-1916)

„He who truly and passionately loves the Truth, the Freedom and the Homeland, is free and fearless as a God, and despised and hungry as a dog."

Petar Kocic (the village of Stricici in the Zmijanje area, near Banja Luka, 29 June 1877 - Belgrade, 27 August 1916) was a Serbian poet, writer and politician. He is considered to be one of the first modern writers of the Serbian literature, but also a person whose life and political activity made him into a role model for various political beliefs in the subsequent history of the Serbian people. He influenced, in particular, Nobel Prize winner  Ivo Andric, who wrote as many as four essays about him.

He completed his elementary school at the Gomionica Monastery and the Serb-Orthodox School in Banja Luka. He continued his education at the Grammar School in Sarajevo wherefrom he was expelled due to his political views, after which he went to the First Grammar School in Belgrade. Since 1899 he studied at the University of Vienna where he graduated in 1904. After a short stay in Belgrade, he was appointed a professor at the Serb Grammar School in Skopje, wherefrom he was fired after having written a satirical article and he returned to Sarajevo in 1905. During this period he started his political struggle to improve the situation of the Serbian population in Bosnia and Herzegovina, advocating in particular for the liberation of serfs. He wrote ardent articles against the Austrian administration, he participated in the big people's strike (1906) and worked to gather together Serbian forces. Austro-Hungarian authorities saw Kocic as a major threat and worked to curb his political activities. He was apprehended and detained three times due to newspaper articles and his criticism of the authorities. He spent a total of two years in prison, mainly in solitary confinement, which affected his mental health. In 1907, he launched Homeland magazine in Banja Luka. As a national and social revolutionary, Kocic was very popular among the village population and advanced youth, and was elected a member of the Bosnian Parliament in 1910.

Kocic wrote works of all three literary genres: epics (short stories, sketch stories and images), lyrics (poems in verse and prose) and drama (dramatic satires). His most important artistic achievements include short stories and dramatic satires. In addition to him being considered to be one of the first modern Serbian writers, Kocic is also considered to be the first great Serbian writer from Bosnia and Herzegovina, the writer who brought the Bosnian peasant into the Serbian literature and a writer who enlivened short stories based on village settings.

The work of Kocic had a large readership already during the author’s life. An independent publication of The Badger on Trial saw eleven editions during the period from 1904 until 1914. His short stories influenced broadly the next generation of writers, and, in particular, the production of Nobel Prize winner Ivo Andric. His political activity, his defiance and his steel firmness made Kocic into an historical figure of the Serb people in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Kocic gave his most systematic and broadest criticism of Austro-Hungarian authorities in his satiric dramas the Badger on Trial and Trials. His satire, as Andric stressed, was : „A real whip for the tyrants, many of his sentences have become flying words among the people“.

There are several schools and a large number of streets named after Kocic, including the literary awards of Kocic's Feather and Kocic's Book, the Theatre Fest and the Kocic's Gathering cultural event. The series of BAM 100 banknotes carries his image, just like the coat of arms of Banja Luka, together with Ban Svetislav Milosavljevic. There is a park named after him in the centre of Banja Luka with his statue erected, in 1932, in his honour, the work of sculptors Antun Augustincic and Vanja Radaus. The words of Petar Kocic are engraved on the statue: „He who truly and passionately loves the Truth, the Freedom and the Homeland, is free and fearless as a God, and despised and hungry as a dog". His most famous works are his dramatic satires The Badger on Trial (1904) and Trials (1910), just like his short stories Jablan and The Battlefield of Simeun Djak (1904).

The Board of Academicians of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts included him amongst the one hundred most prominent Serbs in 1993.