Nikola Tesla's Father - Milutin Tesla (1819 - 1879)

Milutin Tesla was born in Raduc, county Medak, Lika, on February 19

(OS), 1819. The Serbs came to Raduc from around Knin in the 1690s, having

arrived there from western Serbia, via Hercegovina. The name Tesla denotes either

a trade, as tesla is Serbian for adze- a small axe with a blade at right

angles to the handle - or a physical characteristic, such as protruding teeth,

prevalent in the Tesla family. The name Tesla is also found in Ukraine.

In Roman times, there was a place near Raduc, called Tesleum. Milutin's

father, Nikola, was born in 1789, and during the Napoleonic wars, when

Krajina was part of the newly-formed French Province of Illyricum, was a

sergeant in the French army. He married Ana Kalinic, from the family of Colonel

Kalinic, who is mentioned in the Raduc military records for 1735 and 1754;

sometime after 1815, and the return of the old Austrian order, he moved to Gospic.

Nikola and Ana had two sons: Milutin and Josif, and three daughters:

Stanka, Janja, and one whose name has not been remembered.

Milutin attended the German-language public school; then, together

with his brother, went to the Military Officers' Training School; but the

military profession, with its discipline and drills, did not suit him and,

following a reprimand for not keeping his brass buttons bright enough, he

left, and enrolled into the Orthodox Seminary in Plaski, completing his

studies in 1845, as the foremost student in his class. In 1847,

Milutin married Djuka Mandic, the 25-year old daughter of priest

Nikola Mandic, from Gracac, and was ordained by Bishop Evgenije Jovanovic,

who appointed him, first, to be in charge of the church in Stikad,

and from there, on April 30, 1847, sent him to Senj on the Adriatic coast.

The young pastor was expected to strengthen the congregation of some forty households,

and represent Serbs before the "foreign and Catholic persons."

Milutin was paid 200 forints per year, and an additional 40 forints toward a

lodging, but these sums were barely enough to make ends meet. Milutin was "a

head taller" than his congregation, of pale, serious visage,

high cheek bones, sparse beard, and a talented speaker and preacher.

For his sermon "On Labour" he was awarded the Red Sash of the Bishop. He was

a fine penman, and wrote many letters, some of which have been preserved.

On July 20, 1848, he writes to the local military commander, Major

Froschmeier von Scheibenoch, requesting that he allow Serb soldiers

to attend the Orthodox Church services on Sundays: his request was

transmitted to the Governor of Croatia in Zagreb for a final decision, and the

Commander continued to send all soldiers to the obligatory Roman Catholic mass

- "holding our clergy as nothing," noted Milutin Tesla. Poor

material circumstances were compounded by ill health. "It is impossible to

preserve one's health here...", he writes to the Bishop. In mid-August

1850, he is so ill, that his brother-in-law, Toma Mandic, comes to

Senj, to perform his pastoral duties, and stays for many months in the "stony

church perched on a steep cliff."

On Easter Monday, 1852, Milutin responds on the back of the received

letter, and adds a post script, "Forgive me, I have no paper." On July 31,

of the same year, he writes, "Justice sits on the throne, and law courts

are, God forbid, as if we were under the Ottoman Porte..." But, "By God!

Nothing is as sacred to me as my church and my forefathers' law and custom, and

nothing so precious as liberty, well-being and advancement of my people and

my brothers, and for these two, the church and the people, wherever

I am, I'll be ready to lay down my life."

In mid-September, 1852, after nearly five-and-a-half years in Senj,

Milutin and Djuka put their three small children, and few possessions, in

the ox-cart for the 75 kilometre trek over the Dinaric mountains,

back to Lika, to their new destination - the pastorage of St. Peter and Paul in

Smiljan - the place of sweet basils.

The white church, at the foot of the Bogdanic mountain, beside the

Vaganac running brook, was built in 1765, on the foundations of an older

church. Beside the church, there was a fine wooden house for the

family. The great educator and writer, Dositej Obradovic, had stayed in it twice, and

Vuk Karadzic once, in 1838. Smiljan was a large parish and

congregation, the priest's plot of land plentiful and fertile, the

Tesla and Mandic extended families were close. Milutin's health improved,

he subscribed to publications, and began to write articles for the Serbian Diary of

Novi Sad, Srbobran in Zagreb, Serbo-Dalmatian magazine in Zadar, signing his

name, variously, as "T", "M.T.", "Milutin Tesla, Pastor of the Orthodox

Diocese of the Upper Karlovac", "Pastor in Smiljan", and more rarely, under

pseudonyms, said to be Rodoljub Srbic and Rodoljub Pravicic.

In 1855, in the Diary, he writes, "Lika is, according to its

territory and populace, large, and is made up of only Serbs, or if you like, of

Serbs and Croats, of Orthodox and Catholic faith. In Lika, there are more

Serbs of Orthodox than of Roman Catholic faith." But he also notes,

"Except for the clergy and merchants or tradesmen, here and there, hardly anyone

knows how to sign his name in Serbian."

He wanted to build a Serbian-language school in Gospic. In the Dairy

of March 10, 1857, he writes, "Serbs in Croatia do not have High

schools, preparatory schools, or any other public places of

learning. The sons of this poor people are not able to attend

distant schools... without any stipends...." But all his efforts to

improve the lot of the people were met by a wall of poverty, want of learning, and

foreigner's political agenda.

A literate man was not reliable cannon fodder; and fodder was the role

reserved for the Krajina Serbs. Milutin had a large library,

consisting, not only of clerical books, but also of current belles-lettres in Serbian,

Croat, German, Italian and French. He recited verses with ease, and liked to say, in good

humour, that if such and such a classic were lost, he would recover it from

memory!

His most prized book was the 236-page Sluzbenik, printed in Venice in 1517,

by Bozidar Vukovic from Podgorica, a book printer of great craftsmanship.

After Milutin's death, Djuka kept the book; after her death, Nikola took

it with him to New York, and had it restored; and after Nikola, the book

passed into the hands of his nephew, Sava Kosanovic who, in 1950, as

Yugoslavia's Ambassador to the United States, presented it to President Truman. This

rare "Book of the Serbian Liturgy" is now on display in the Harry

Truman's Library in Independence, Missouri. By 1859, there were five

children in the Tesla family: Dane, born in 1848,

Angelina in '50, Milka in '52, Nikola in '56 and Marica, born that year.

"Our priest has children above all children," the Smiljan Serbs

said. The first-born, Dane, in the words of his younger brother, was

"gifted to an extraordinary degree."

The Tesla house was a busy place. There were endless visits by

parishioners, relatives, passers-by, visiting both Milutin and Djuka, who was a

spinner, seamstress and embroideress of renown; blind guslars came, and

stayed for days, singing heroic ballads. These were the happy years.

Djuka kept the house.

Milutin even indulged in some wit and yielded to small

vanities. Nikola wrote the following:

"Amongst the help there was a cross-eyed man called Mane... he was

chopping wood one day. As he swung the axe, my father cautioned him,

'For God's sake, Mane, do not strike at what you are looking, but at what

you intend to hit......'

On another occasion he was taking out for a

drive a friend who carelessly permitted his costly fur coat to rub

on the carriage wheel.

My father reminded him of it saying, 'Pull in your coat, you

are ruining my tire.' He had the odd habit of talking to himself and

would often carry on an animated conversation and indulge in heated argument,

changing the tone of his voice. A casual listener might have sworn that

several people were in the room." He once asked a shephardess,

"Whose cows are these?" only to be told," Father Tesla's."

Another time, Djuka was drying some newly-thrashed wheat, left it

unattended, and a cow came and fed on it in part, and scattered the

rest. She was upset at this waste of grain, but Milutin said, "Djuka, our

cow ate our wheat."

For services Milutin had rendered some Moslems, they gave him an

Arab stallion. Milutin rode it when visiting more distant families.

The horse was suicidal and easily panicked. On one occasion, startled by wolves,

the beast threw Milutin off, and galloped home, but was smart enough to

retrace his steps and bring the rescue party to meet the abandoned rider. The

15-year old Dane was in charge of grooming the horse, and one summer day, in

1863, it cost him his life. This is how Nikola described it: "This horse

was responsible for my brother's injuries from which he died.

I witnessed the tragic scene and altho fifty-six years have elapsed

since, my visual impression of it has lost none of its force...." Dane was

buried in the graveyard, only steps away from the church and the

house, and the life of the Tesla family would never be the same. In

the face of sudden-fallen hope, and to avoid looking at that fresh

grave, the family moved to Gospic, on September 1 of that year, where

Milutin would be the pastor of the onion-domed Church of Great Martyr George for

the next sixteen years. The seven-year old Nikola served as a bell ringer,

mourning the loss of his brother, and of the green pastures and forests of

Smiljan.

Milutin looked after his parish work, taught the Orthodox religion in

the local schools, wrote less and less, and at a relatively young age,

came tobe called Old Man Milovan. He was on exceptionally good terms with

the local Catholic priest, Kostrencic, and not infrequently, the two pastors

would attend each other's liturgy. But watching his now only son, in

his timorous awkwardness, guilelessness, extraordinary sensitivity, and ambitions

which looked beyond the known and the familiar and did not bode well for a

rational or happy life, there was no dance in Milutin's voice. He

wanted Nikola to follow a church calling, but Nikola was determined

to be a professor, technician, or an electrical engineer. And there was

nothing Milutin could do.

Milutin Tesla would not live to see Nikola find his calling and

dazzle the world with his inventions. He did not live to see a single

grandchild - and there would be ten -children of his three daughters - amongst them

an Archi-mandrite, an engineer, a medical doctor, a lawyer, an Ambassador.

For in late March 1879, he fell ill from some unspecified illness, and

died on April 17 (OS), aged 60 years. The next day, Milutin was given a

"funeral liturgy fit for a saint", and was buried in the Jasikovac cemetery in

Divoselo. When the moment of burial came, the sun came out over the leafless cemetery, as it

would burst forth during the funeral service to his son, many years later. Djuka

survived Milutin by thirteen years. The following anecdote is worth

repeating. Some time after Milutin's death, a certain priest, Pepo

Milojevic, who had wooed Djuka when they were both young, said on

meeting her, "Eh, Djuka, if you'd married me, you wouldn't now be a widow."

To which Djuka responded, "I would rather be Milutin Tesla's widow

than Pepo Milojevic's wife."

Conclusion

There are no surviving sermons of Milutin Tesla. His birth house in

Raduc was burnt down in 1941. The Serbian villages in the "Medak pocket"

were burnt down in 1993. The Church of St. George the Martyr in

Gospic was demolished in 1992. The house and church in Smiljan,

extensively renovated in the years after 1863, were burnt down in 1941; rebuilt in the

1980s; partially burnt down, and vandalized, in 1992; and now stand empty,

subject to hatefilled political spinning. 590 Smiljan Serbs were massacred

in 1941; and the remainder, said to be only eleven people, were ethnically

cleansed in 1995. The little graveyard, where Dane was buried, is overgrown

with weeds. The running brook dried up years ago. The closest living

descendent of Milutin Tesla is his great-grandson, William Terbo,

who is American-born.

April, 2002