The problem of illegal children in Bosnia and Herzegovina under the Austro-Hungarian administration (Example of Stana Vladetić and Muhamed beg Kulenović Bukovača)

Abstract

Based on archival material, the paper is trying to present one segment, poorly researched until now, of the marital everyday life of ordinary people in Bosnia and Herzegovina under the Austro-Hungarian administration, which concerns the problem of illegitimate children. An example through which this segment of private life will be shown in the paper will be the struggle of the Orthodox Church to baptize four children obtained from the long-term extramarital union of Stana Vladetić from Lapac with Muhamed-beg Kulenović Bukovača from Bosanski Petrovac. Church and secular authorities were involved in the entire case, from the lowest to the highest levels, at the level of the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. As this issue was outside the jurisdiction of the parish priest, he turned to the competent Consistory of the Metropolitanate of Dabar-Bosnia, which then turned to the Provincial Government in Sarajevo. And the legal struggle started at that moment. During the eight years that the struggle lasted, the parish clergy appealed for help to the Metropolitanate of Dabar-Bosnia, and later to the Metropolitanate of Banja Luka, and they later appealed to the Provincial Government. However, a positive solution to the problem was not in sight; on the contrary, it only deepened. A special issue was the fact that Muhamed-beg Kulenović was an influential Muslim leader in the Bosanski Petrovac District, but also in the entire Bosnian Krajina of that time. In addition to the above, he was also an influential politician, the Mayor of Bosanski Petrovac at one point. By coincidence or not, the whole story had a negative epilogue in 1907, at the time when Kulenović was performing the function of a Mayor.