17 Facts About Josip Frank

When Ivan Mazuranic became Croatian ban in 1873, Josip Frank criticized him because of his relations with the Magyars and the Serbs.

In 1880, Josip Frank published a brochure titled Die Quote Kroatiens, in which he tried to prove that Croatia bore a disproportionately high financial burden since the 1868 Nagodba, a legal arrangement that regulated the constitutional position of Croatia within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

In 1880, Josip Frank was elected to the Zagreb City council, where he would serve until 1894.

In 1884, Josip Frank was elected as an independent delegate to the Croatian Sabor, representing the Kotar of Popovaca.

Josip Frank became instrumental in the writing of the political program of the Party of Rights, published on June 6,1894.

Shortly afterward, and shortly before Starcevic died, Josip Frank persuaded Starcevic to split off his fraction to form the Pure Party of Rights with its mouthpiece Hrvatsko pravo.

Josip Frank maintained an interest in financial matters, which earned him a regular place in the Croatian Parliament's finance committee, and later in the budget committee.

Josip Frank was a member of the board of financial matters of the Kingdom of Croatia between 1898 and 1906.

In 1904 Josip Frank reiterated his demands for a financial independence of Croatia, and in part due to his efforts, in 1906 a new financial agreement between Croatia and Hungary was formed which was considered the most beneficial to the Croatian side.

One of the most important characteristics of the Josip Frank's followers was their anti-Serb position.

Josip Frank played a role in the infamous Friedjung trial of 1909 where it would be proved that the Austrian historian Heinrich Friedjung reproduced libellous claims of treason against the leaders of the Croato-Serbian Coalition.

Josip Frank carried on Starcevic's ideology, and defined Croat identity 'strictly in terms of Serbophobia'.

Josip Frank opposed any cooperation between Croats and Serbs, and the historian Aleksa Djilas described him as "a leading anti-Serbian demagogue and the instigator of the persecution of Serbs in Croatia".

Josip Frank's followers, called Frankovci, were the most ardent Ustashe members.

Politically, Josip Frank appeared as a radical nationalist, who apparently lent himself to the political ideas of a "Greater Croatia" and a trialistic approach to the Habsburg lands by making the Kingdom of Croatia the third entity in the empire.

Unlike Ante Starcevic, that was anticlerical, Josip Frank considered to be useful collaboration with Catholic church in Croatia.

In 1909 Josip Frank fell terminally ill, and could no longer take active part in politics.