George Vid Tomashevich

George Vid Tomashevich (Vocin, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 3 March 1927 – Berkeley, California, 3 December 2009) was an eminent Serbian poet, writer and professor of anthropology in the United States of America. As a scholar of universal erudition, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at State University of New York, College at Buffalo, Tomashevich was an eloquent speaker and greatly in demand among Serbian Americans and Serbian Canadians.

Tomashevich belonged to a distinguished Serbian family in Slavonia which had taken refuge in Belgrade from the World War II persecution of Serbs at the time when Ante Pavelić founded and led the Independent State of Croatia during the Axis occupation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in April 1941. In Belgrade many Serbs from Croatia, Dalmatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kossovo, Macedonia and Montenegro found a safe heaven under the protection of Milan Nedić's government in German-occupied Serbia.

He was a most liberal-minded man, both in politics and religion, an enthusiastic supporter of popular education and a most inspiring teacher. He took great interest in the struggle of the Serbs for independence and strongly favoured the establishment of a monarchy (along British lines) which came about in 2002 when Crown Prince Alexander Karageogević decided to return home to his ancestral roots. Tomashevich was a member of Alexander, Crown Prince of Yugoslavia’s Privy Council. He was also a member of The Serbian Heritage Academy of Canada, based in Toronto, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) in Belgrade, and the Nikola Tesla Memorial Society of New York.

He came to the United States shortly after World War II. He received his bachelor's degree in sociology from Roosevelt University and his master's and doctoral degrees in anthropology from the University of Chicago. He came to Buffalo in 1968 to teach anthropology at Buffalo State College and retired in 1995.

His distinguished academic career, including many books, articles and public lectures, contributed to the fields of Anthropology, Sociology, History, Philosophy, Philosophy of History, History of Philosophy and Science, Comparative Religion, Mythology, Linguistics, Folklore and Literature. Prof. Tomashevich, who was born in Vochin, former Yugoslavia, was a survivor of a concentration camp run by Croatian authorities during the Second World War. This harrowing experience stayed with him, and influenced his academic work, for the rest of his life. As a scholar and poet, he wrote movingly on universal human topics, as well as on achievements of Serbian art, history and culture.

Work

His book The Millenniad: Humanity's Road to Maturity, was described as universal in scope, and unusually diversified in content; this work encompasses human efforts, struggles, and concerns from cosmology to sociology. Suffused with benevolent irony and, at times, sardonic humor, it depicts our species's struggle against early ignorance, fear, and superstition, often institutionalized into powerful and controlling bodies seeking to monopolize the interpretation of the unknown. The whole work is in the form of a poem divided thematically into twelve cantos. It touches upon ancient, medieval, and modern philosophy in relation to concomitant developments in science and technology as they gradually reveal the nature of the universe, its material substance, as well as the problems of life, consciousness, and self-awareness. From the beginning, it also deals with major problems of politics, economics, morality and religion. From the subjective nature of the introductory parts, to the epilogue, the whole work is a portrayal of a modern intellectual's immersion in, and confrontation with contemporary reality and its open questions. The Millenniad is a massive, erudite, and thought-provoking effort worthy of serious reading and critical contemplation.

References

• Serbica Americana: http://eserbia.org/people/literature/718-george-vid-tomashevich