The Croatian Museum of Tourism, in collaboration with the City Museum of Rijeka, presents the exhibition “Ante Mandić – Law, Politics, Legacy”, dedicated to the life and work of the prominent Croatian lawyer and politician. For the first time in one place, the exhibition provides an overview of the life, work and public activity of Ante Mandić, as well as the history of the Mandić family. Visitors will have the opportunity to see personal documents and correspondence of Ante Mandić, artwork, and rarely displayed photographs of the Regency Council, which further illuminate the political and social context of his time. Through selected material, the exhibition offers an insight into the personal and professional path of Ante Mandić, his legal and political activities, and the legacy he left in the history of the Liburnia region and beyond. The author of the exhibition texts is Maja Polić, PhD, from the Department of Historical and Social Sciences of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Rijeka, who has been academically researching Ante Mandić for many years. The exhibition invites visitors to explore the life and times of Ante Mandić through documents, photographs and artistic materials, and to discover the story of a man whose work left an indelible mark on the legal, political and social history of Rijeka and Liburnia.
ANTE MANDIĆ PhD (1881–1959)
Lawyer, diplomat and statesman
About Ante Mandić
Ante Mandić PhD (1881–1959), a prominent lawyer, diplomat and statesman, was one of the key figures in the political and social history of the Croatian Littoral in the first half of the 20th century. On the occasion of the anniversary of his birth, the Croatian Museum of Tourism, in collaboration with the City Museum of Rijeka, presents an exhibition dedicated to his life and public activities. The exhibition is a direct result of years of systematic archival research by Maja Polić, PhD, and, for the first time, gathers and synthesises valuable documentary material from Croatian and foreign archives and museums, as well as material evidence from the family’s private estate. The exhibited documents, photographs, personal correspondence and other relevant original materials reconstruct the exceptional and complex life path of an individual who actively participated in key political processes and crucial events of his era. Mandić was born in 1881 in Trieste, into a respectable middle-class family originally from Mihotići near Kastav, and his early upbringing and the formation of his intellectual profile took place under the close mentorship of his uncle Matko Mandić, a famous Istrian revivalist. He began his institutional education in Trieste, Zagreb and Sušak, and continued his law studies at the University of Vienna, after which he deepened his legal education at the University of Graz, where he obtained his doctorate in law. He began his professional legal career in Trieste, and in 1911 he opened his own law firm in Opatija, where, as a successful lawyer, he interacted with prominent public figures of the time, amongst whom Uliks Stanger PhD and Frano Supilo stand out. In Mandić’s private and professional life, his wife Olga Nikolajevna Stepenko (1878–1970) played an extremely important role; as a Russian woman with a high-level career, Stepenko was amongst the first women employed by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Their story together began in Trieste, and they had two sons, Oleg and Igor. At the time of the outbreak of World War I, the family were in Russia visiting relatives. There, Mandić shaped his geopolitical activities as one of the prominent members of the Yugoslav Committee, successfully managing its strategic offices in Petrograd and London. After the end of the war, he briefly worked in Zagreb and Prague, where he also served as the president of the Yugoslav-Czechoslovak League. Disappointed with the political outcome and the unresolved Istrian question, in 1921, Mandić decided to return to Opatija, which was then under Italian administration, where he reopened his law practice and continued his legal work within the new state and legal framework. A few years after his return, he built the Villa Mandić, which became the family home. Mandić’s law firm, which his son Oleg joined after completing his studies, took up the defence in every dispute that Istrian Croats had with the increasingly vehement pressure of fascist Italy. In 1937, Mandić went to Belgrade and began years of penury. The beginning of World War II brought Mandić back to Opatija, where in the initial phase he maintained discreet ties with representatives of the Yugoslav government in exile, although he soon actively joined the National Liberation movement. His son Oleg first joined the National Liberation Army, and then Ante Mandić himself with his close friend Milivoj Jambrišak. With the capitulation of the Kingdom of Italy in September 1943, Mandić took over the duties of the first president of the National Liberation Committee of Opatija, and at the same time was elected a councillor of ZAVNOH (State Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Croatia) and a delegate to the Second Session of AVNOJ (The Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia) in Jajce, placing him at the very top of the new political structure. The war events deeply and tragically affected his family; in May 1944, the German occupation authorities arrested his wife Olga, daughter-in-law Nevenka and grandson Oleg in the family villa in Opatija and deported them to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Despite heavy personal losses, Mandić took on supreme political responsibility in the final months of the war and was appointed a member of the three-member Royal Regency, directly participating in the legal and institutional establishment of the new state government, before he died in a Lovran hospital in the winter of 1959. Throughout his entire public and institutional activity, Ante Mandić PhD remained consistently committed to the principles of the rule of law, professional responsibility and uncompromising service to the common good. His rich professional, political and diplomatic biography represents a first-class historiographical source that testifies to the extremely complex historical circumstances under which the fate of Opatija, Liburnia, Kvarner and the wider Croatian region was shaped. This space was transformed through the processes of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the trauma of two world wars, and the radical redefinition and creation of a new European order. In this context, this exhibition goes beyond the framework of a classic biographical account of an exceptional individual and functions as a microhistorical study of one family, one urban environment, and an epoch of great, structural historical change.
Matea Plišić, MA in Hist. et MA in Hist. Art.
Curator Intern
Accompanying Professional Programme
• 12 October 2026 at 18:00 – Historian Maja Polić PhD will deliver a lecture on the life, legal, and political work of Ante Mandić, offering deeper insights into the complex social and historical circumstances in which he operated.
• 27 October 2026 at 18:00 – Prof. Goran Vojković PhD will present a lecture on Uliks Stanger, Mandić’s legal partner and a fighter against the Italianisation of Istria, with a special emphasis on his visionary 1909 study on the protection of the coastline and the public domain.
Exhibition Credits
- Organised by: Croatian Museum of Tourism
- In collaboration with: City Museum of Rijeka
- Concept Author and Curator: Matea Plišić
- Expert Associate: Marija Lazanja Dušević, City Museum of Rijeka
- Text Author: Maja Polić PhD, Department of Historical and Social Sciences of CASA in Rijeka
- Exhibition Design: Lada Sega
- Graphic Design: Wanda design
- Technical Setup: Ranko Puž
- Proofreading and Copyediting: Dijana Stanić-Rešicki
- English Translation: Martin Mayhew
- Media Promotion: Ivan Modrić
Note:
The text author, Maja Polić PhD, Department of Historical and Social Sciences of CASA in Rijeka, conducts her research as part of the university project funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU – “HIDI: State and Legal Traditions of the Northern Adriatic through European Influences and Digital Historiography” (uniri-iz-25-212). The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the European Union or the European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the European Commission can be held responsible for them.
The exhibition was organised with the financial support of the City of Opatija and the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia.
