Statute of Karlobag (1757)

What makes this particular copy so exceptional, however, is the extraordinary two-century odyssey it endured. Its pages preserve authentic traces—true “scars of history”—of a remarkable journey in which the volume narrowly escaped destruction in Vienna, avoided becoming Nazi war booty in Germany, and ultimately returned to its homeland intact.

1. The Imperial Legislative Commission in Vienna (late eighteenth century)

Soon after it was printed in 1757, this copy was sent to Vienna for the use of the Legislative Commission (Gesetz-Commission) and the Supreme Judicial Office (Oberste Justizstelle), institutions associated with Maria Theresa’s efforts to unify legislation throughout the monarchy. The earliest round black-and-white stamp, written in historical German orthography, records this provenance: “K. K. BIBLIOTHECK der ob. Just. Stelle und der GESETZ Com.”

2. Private Noble Ownership and Return to State Custody (early nineteenth century)

During the administrative reorganisations that followed the Empress’s death, the book briefly entered private ownership. It became part of the distinguished legal library of Francesco Koller di Nagy Manya, whose printed ex libris remains visible. The document subsequently returned to state custody and entered the holdings of the Imperial-Royal Supreme Court (K.K. Oberster Gerichtshof), as shown by a black rectangular stamp. Croatian scholars recorded the Statute there in the nineteenth century, and Dr Ivan Strohal documented its location in his 1911 work “Statuti primorskih gradova i općina”.

3. Transfer to the Palace of Justice (after 1881)

After the monumental Vienna Palace of Justice (Justizpalast) was completed in 1881, the Statute was incorporated into the newly consolidated collection. Its final Viennese mark is a round purple stamp bearing the imperial double-headed eagle and the inscription “Zentralbibliothek im Justizpalaste in Wien”.

4. Between the Vienna Fire and Forgotten Repositories: The Road to Restitution

Although later Austrian records suggested that the Statute of Karlobag had been destroyed or lost during the Second World War, its actual fate was different and ultimately far more fortunate for Croatian heritage. Information from the Central Library of the Austrian Supreme Court (Zentralbibliothek des OGH) shows that the collections in the Vienna Palace of Justice faced two major historical threats.

The first major threat was the catastrophic fire at the Vienna Palace of Justice in 1927, which destroyed a substantial quantity of archival and library material. A further danger followed after the Anschluss, when Nazi authorities transferred valuable books from Vienna to Leipzig and the Reich Court (Reichsgericht). For many years, Austrian specialists had reason to suspect that the Karlobag Statute had disappeared during these wartime transfers.

An official response from the library of the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig (Bundesverwaltungsgericht), however, confirms that the Statute was never accessioned there and is not held in its historical collections. This indicates that the document escaped the transfers to Germany. Its precise wartime location is not documented in the material presented here; it may have remained in an Austrian repository or another protected storage site.

After the war, the Statute was again held in Vienna. It was located in the late 1970s during efforts to return historical material and was transferred to Croatia in 1979 as part of an official restitution of cultural property from Austria.

Today, this surviving witness to history is preserved in the Croatian State Archives (HDA) in Zagreb as part of collection HR-HDA-1633. Its stamps and inscriptions are more than administrative marks of institutions that no longer exist: they document the long journey by which an important part of Karlobag’s heritage survived imperial administration, fire, wartime upheaval and decades of uncertainty before returning permanently to Croatia.