Slavko Grujić

Slavko J. Grujić ( sr-Cyrl, Славко Ј. Грујић; 15 February 1871 – 24 March 1937) was a Serbian diplomat, marshal of the court, and philanthropist. A skilled diplomat he was one of the main contributors of the response to the Austrian ultimatum of 23 July 1914, which some scholars have called "a masterpiece of diplomatic equivocation”. After the First World War, he became Yugoslavia's first ambassador to the United States returning to serve as Marshal of the Court to King Peter II of Yugoslavia. He died in London, while serving as ambassador of Yugoslavia to the United Kingdom, in 1937.

Early life

Slavko Grujić was born in Belgrade, Principality of Serbia. He was the fourth son, of eight children, to Serbian statesman and diplomat Jevrem Grujić, his father was a central figure of the St Andrew's Day Assembly and the instigator of Serbia's first law on the National Assembly. Slavko Grujić finished high school in Marseille, France, before studying at the Sorbonne University in Paris, where he received his Doctor of Law degree () in 1897. He began his diplomatic career as a clerk in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Serbia in January 1898.

Career

Grujić is sent as attaché to Serbia's embassy in Constantinople, then to Athens as Chargé d'affaires. A few years later Grujić is sent to represent the Serbian Kingdom in Petrograd.

In early October 1908, during the Bosnian Crisis, he is Chargé d'affaires in London, when the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary announced the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. One of Grujić proposal, attached to the protest of the Serbian government, was the concession of a railway to the Adriatic coast, and on the Bosnian side, a revision of the Serbian frontier.

On the eve of the First World War, Grujić is secretary-general of the Serbian ministry of Foreign Affairs, on 30 June he met with the Austro-Hungarian secretary of the Habsburg legation in Belgrade, Wilhelm Ritter von Storck, about the Sarajevo assassinations. On 23 July 1914, in the absence of Nikola Pašić, Grujić and acting prime minister Lazar Paču receive from Austrian minister Baron Wladimir Giesl von Gieslingen the ultimatum of Austria-Hungary, Slavko Grujić was one of the main contributors of the reply to the Austrian note.
According to Christopher Clark, professor of History at the University of Cambridge, the Serbian reply was "a masterpiece of diplomatic equivocation", Baron Alexander von Musulin, Austria's special envoy, who had written the first draft of the ultimatum, described it as ‘the most brilliant specimen of diplomatic skill’ that he had ever encountered.

After the great retreat Slavko Grujić organized the transfer of refugees from the Albanian coast to Corfu and to France. As one of the closest collaborators of Prime Minister Nikola Pašić, at the start of January 1916, Grujić was sent to Brindisi as the "Serbian delegate for refugees". In Brindisi, he met with the commanders of the Italian navy to convince them to send ships to Medua. More than 5,000 refugees were evacuated safely including 700 schoolchildren sent to Marseille.

In 1916 he became the first Serbian Ambassador to Switzerland where together with Mable he actively organised humanitarian help to occupied Serbia with the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva.
On 13 January 1919, Slavko Grujić becomes the first ambassador of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, ie the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, in Washington a position he held until 1922. On 10 February 1919, Acting Secretary of State Frank Polk wrote to the Yugoslav Minister to the United States Slavko Grouvitch that the United States Government recognized that the Serbian Legation will thereafter be known as the Legation for the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.

Upon his return to the country, he actively participated in the work of various humanitarian societies. In 1934, after the death of King Alexander I, he became marshal of the court of the young King Peter II of Yugoslavia. In 1935 Grujić was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary at the Court of St. James ie ambassador to the United Kingdom, and at the same time to the Netherlands. He died in London of heart failure on 24 March 1937.

Personal life

In 1901, at a ball at the American embassy in Athens, he met his future wife, 21-year-old American archeologist, Mabel Dunlop, they married and returned to Belgrade where he became secretary to the Serbian Cabinet. During the Great War, Mabel organised fundraisings in America for Serbia crossing the ocean more than twenty times by steamer, she founded the Serbian Hospital Fund and a baby hospital in Niš. After the war, Mabel and Slavko Grujić managed to receive $100,000 from the Carnegie Foundation in 1920, to build the University Library Svetozar Marković. According to Barbara Tuchman, Mable Grujić was also recruiting agents for the British Naval Intelligence during the first and second world war.

See also

* Marshal of the Court (Serbia, Yugoslavia)
* List of honorary British knights and dames

Notes

References

Citations

Sources

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Grujić, Slavko
1871 births
1937 deaths
Government ministers of Serbia
Serbian diplomats
Diplomats from Belgrade
20th-century diplomats
Ambassadors of Yugoslavia
Ambassadors of Yugoslavia to the United Kingdom
Ambassadors of Yugoslavia to the United States
Marshals of the Court (Serbia, Yugoslavia)
Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire