On June 21, 2021, in Oktavijana Valića Street, a memorial plaque was discovered on the house where he lived and died Ivo Grohovac. He was born on this day 146 years ago in Grohovo. He was a poet and publicist who at the time of Italianization and Hungarianization fought passionately for the use of the local, Croatian language and local Chakavian speech in Rijeka and its surroundings. During his short life (he died at the age of 39 from the effects of tuberculosis) he published three collections of poems, as well as numerous articles in the Riječka glasnik, Riječka novine and Riječka nova list, in which he published under the pseudonym Tik-tak in the section Negda i sada.
Association Without Borders keeps the memory of Ivo Grohovac, and cooperates with the descendants of the Grohovac family, especially with Mrs. Stella Maček Grohovac and Mrs. Sylvie Remillard. The family financed the construction and installation of the panel on the entrance wall in front of the house at today's address Oktavijana Valića 29 in Rijeka. Today, this house is occupied by the Portner family whose courtesy is placed a plaque at the entrance to the courtyard of the house. In order to get this information about the present address of the former house of Ivo Grohovac, a real little research was conducted. Our valuable members Vesna Lukanović and Christian Grailach were helped by Mladen Urem, Head of the Archives Reading Room Department of the State Archives in Rijeka, as well as Dragica Fadljević, Director of the Department of Local Self-Government of the Department of City Self-Government and Administration of the City of Rijeka. Thank you all!
At the beginning of the ceremony, Christian Grailach read a brief review of the life and work of Ivo Grohovac, and Vesna Lukanović read Grohovac's work on toponyms Belveder and Kozala, for which Grohovac offers old names. Thus Belveder is actually Vozrinj, and the area of today's Kozala carried a number of names, some of which have been maintained to this day in the names of the streets (Brašćine, Lukovići, etc.). On behalf of the City of Rijeka, the ceremony was attended by the Deputy Mayor, Mrs. Sandra Krpan, who, together with Mrs. Stela Maček Grohovac, unveiled a memorial plaque.
The event was accompanied by numerous journalistic teams, and you can see for yourself how it looked like:
After the ceremony, we headed to the old cemetery of Donja Drenova where Mrs. Maček Grohovac, accompanied by her daughter Jasmina and granddaughter, laid flowers on the grave of Ivo Grohovac and his family.
For more details on the life and work of Ivo Grohovac, see a short presentation prepared by Chistian Grailach:
English