Slobodan Jovanović

Introduction
The topic of this seminary is “Biography of Slobodan Jovanovic”. According to that, we will in short explain the most important and representative things of his career as historians, professor and especially as a professor of low.
Slobodan Jovanovic  (December 3, 1869, Novi Sad, Serbia – December 12, 1958, London, United Kingdom) was one of Serbia’s most prolific jurists,  historians,  sociologists, journalists and literary critics. He distinguished himself with a characteristically clear and sharp writing style later called the “Belgrade style”.
Liberal in his social and political views, he was perhaps Yugoslavia’s greatest authority on constitutional law; also a master of Serbian prose style, he was for nearly half a century a leader of the Serbian intelligentsia. He graduated law in Geneva in 1890. In 1905, he was a professor at the University of Belgrade’s Law School until 1941. He was also a politician while in exile in London during World War II.

 
1.    Slobodan Jovanovic’ s biography
Slobodan Jovanović was born at Novi Sad, then part of the Habsburg Monarchy, on the 3rd of December 1869 to Vladimir Jovanović and his wife Jelena. He was the first Serbian man to be named “Slobodan” ( that means “Free”), while his sister was named “Pravda” (that means “Justice”). He received an excellent education in Belgrade, Munich, Zurich, and Geneva, where he graduated with a law degree. From 1890 to 1892, he took post-graduate studies in constitutional law and political science in Paris before entering the Serbian foreign service. In 1893 he was appointed political attaché with the Serbian mission to Istanbul, where he remained for a couple years. It was at this time that he began to write and have his articles on literary criticism published in various publications throughout the land. He eventually left the diplomatic service in favour of academia and literary pursuits. In 1897 he was appointed professor at the University of Belgrade’s Faculty of Law. For more than four decades, Jovanović taught at the law faculty gaining a reputation as an authority on constitutional law and Serbian language and literature. He was Rector of the University of Belgrade shortly before his retirement in 1939.

He had some influence on political life in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia due to his well established authority in the field of law and history, but he entered directly political life only in 1939 when the Serbian Cultural Club was established, and he was appointed as Club’s president.
He was a pro-Western politician and when a pro-Western military coup took place in Belgrade on March 27, 1941, a pro-Western, essentially pro-British government was installed headed by General Dušan Simović. Jovanović was deputy Prime Minister in that government. The Third Reich attacked the Kingdoms of Yugoslavia and Greece on April 6, and soon defeated Yugoslav and Greek forces. Jovanovic moved in mid April together with King Peter II and other cabinet ministers to Jerusalem and he reached London in July. He became prime minister of the Yugoslavgovernment in exile during World War II on January 11, 1942 and remained in that position till June 26, 1943. Tried in absence by Josip Broz Tito’s communist regime together with general Draža Mihailović, he was sentenced to twenty years in jail which he never served, as well as the loss of political and civil rights for a period of ten years, and confiscation of all property and loss of citizenship.
He spent his later years in exile in London (1945–1958). A memorial plaque in honour of “Professor Slobodan Yovanovitch. Serbian historian, literary critic, legal scholar, Prime Minister of Yugoslavia” may be found in London at 39b Queens Gate Gardens, Kensington.