Konte Ivan

Ivan Konte (Trieste 1910 - Ljubljana 2008)

 

Second-class naval aviation Lieutenant Commander, Lieutenant Colonel, professor of German language and literature

In Slovenia, Ivan Konte was generally known as English language teacher at the Department of German Studies at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana and co-author of the book Modern English Grammar. He wrote it together with Dana Blaganje and is considered one of the fundamental works for Slovenian Anglicists. Less well known is, however, that he was also a naval aviation officer in the Yugoslav Royal Navy as well as a pilot in the RAF (British Royal Air Force) and NOV (National Liberation Army). His soul-stirring life story is marked by several ups and downs, reflected in the place and time in which he lived.

 

Ivan Konte was born in 1910 in Pula, the birthplace of his mother Katarina Krivičić. His father, who was born in Metlika, served in the Austro-Hungarian Navy in Pula. The family with two sons resided in Trieste at first. As his mother was of Italian nationality and his father was Slovenian, they spoke two languages ​​at home. But as the latter believed that his son would not be able to succeed in the Austro-Hungarian Empire without the knowledge of German, Ivan attended a German school in Trieste. After the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the family moved to Ljubljana with their two sons. Ivan graduated there from a secondary school. His wish was to study German or medicine, but his father, with a salary of a postal clerk, was unable to finance his two sons' college education. At his father's request, Ivan thus enrolled at the Naval War Academy in Dubrovnik. Of 300 candidates, only 40 were accepted in 1928 following tough entrance exams.

 

After successfully graduating in 1931, Ivan Konte boarded, with the rank of Sub Lieutenant, the ship Kobac, while in the following year he enrolled, together with a few of his Naval War Academy classmates, in a course for naval aviation officers at Divulje near Split. Among them, about 47% were Slovenians. After specializing as a naval aviation reconnoiterer, he served at Kumbor and Divulje. In October 1936, he returned to a ship for a little over a year, this time to the rescue and salvage ship Spasilac, and later joined naval aviators in Kumbor as a reconnoiterer. In January 1938, he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Commander 2nd class, which enabled him to become Class Officer at the Naval Aviation School at Divulje in the same year. Before the war, he also served as a commander of the school squadron. Apart from his aviation specialization, he also passed the exams for a military hydroreconnaissance officer.

 

As he underlined several times, this period remained most precious to him, despite the homesickness. He loved sailing and flying over Dalmatia. They usually flew over short distances, mostly between Boka Kotorska and Divulje. His longest flight was from Boka Kotorska to the Otranto Gate, lasting six hours. As a reconnaissance officer, he served in various open-type aircraft. He remembered particularly the Do-D-type aircraft and more modern Do-H-type planes.

 

In 1938, he married Iva Peterlin from Ljubljana, who eventually moved to join him at Divulje. As he said, the marriage made it easier for him to study law, which he had no intention to give up despite serving in the Navy. He enrolled at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana as early as 1931, but found studying alongside his job highly demanding. In 1938, he enrolled at the Faculty of Law in Belgrade and completed his first year before the outbreak of war.

 

His settled way of life was abruptly interrupted by World War II. After the 11-day war, the mariners were told to return home. Ivan Konte carried on with his law studies in Ljubljana, but at the same time worked illegally for the Liberation Front. When the Italian occupiers carried out an extensive raid in the Ljubljana region on 19 March 1942, during which the majority of the former members of the Navy were rounded up, Ivan Konte was taken to the Gonars Camp in Italy, and at a later date to the Chiesa Nova Camp near Padua, where the prisoners badly suffered mostly from starvation. He was freed as late as after the capitulation of Italy.

 

On 15 September 1943, the prisoners were packed into cattle wagons and, escorted by soldiers, taken to Zagreb. As they were left without supervision there, Ivan was hiding in Zagreb for a while, until his brother Vili, who worked in the Raša Mine at that time, came to take him away. Together they joined the partisan Zagorje Detachment. From there, Ivan set off on foot to the village of Dole near Draga in the Gorjanci mountain range, where mariners and aviators who wished to join the partisan National Liberation Army’s aviation were gathering. He travelled with them to the island of Vis and eventually to Savalletra and Carovigno in Italy. However, as the partisans could not suitably reconstruct their airport in Carovigno owing to the danger of attacks, they were taken by passenger ship Princess Kathleen to Abukir in Egypt and from there by cars to Benina in Libya. There they set up, with British help and British airplanes, the 1st and 2nd NOVJ aviation regiments. Konte was assigned to the 1st regiment, which had Spitfires at its disposal. According to his account, the unit N. 1 ADU (Number 1 Aircraft Delivery Unit) flew aircraft from West Africa to Egypt, from where others flew them to the fronts. As a reconnaissance officer, he served on board various planes. On his last flight in the RAF, he led a group of nine Ventura planes to Maison Blanch airfield as a chief navigator.

 

On 2 October 1944, the partisan pilots were ordered to leave the RAF at once. From Benina, they travelled to Vis, where Ivan was assigned to the Supreme Headquarters Liaison Squadron. From Vis, he flew several times to Split and over the Dinara mountain range. When they flew, together with pilot Miljenko Lipovščak and gunner Najdanović, a Fieseler aircraft from Tičevo, where the VIII Corps headquarters was based, to Vis, they were shot down by an American Mustang fighter over the village of Vrdovo near Senj. General Četković lost his life, while Ivan Konte and other crew members were only slightly wounded. In November, the squadron moved to Zemun, where Ivan Konte was first appointed the head of the school department of the Yugoslav Air Force Command, and later the head of the intelligence department. He lectured on theoretical navigation.

 

He awaited the end of the war in Zemun. He remained in the Air Force and was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. At that time, he wrote two articles on radiolocation and radars and sent them to Marshal Tito, who soon invited him to a meeting with 12 generals interested in his recommendations on the use of radar. In June 1946 he attended, as a member of the Yugoslav Military Commission and expert on the Navy and aviation, the Paris Peace Conference, and was later, as the Chief of the Intelligence Department of the Air Force Command, sent abroad several times.

 

But his military career, however, came to a sudden end when, during his absence in 1947, the Cominform Resolution was published in Yugoslavia. His brother Vili, who as a communist was raised to admire the Soviet Union and declared himself in favour of the Soviet Union, was arrested. Ivan had expected that they would come to get him, and they really did. As he defended his brother, he was charged with treason, expelled from the Communist Party, and imprisoned. After a month of solitary confinement, he began to be interrogated. As he did not give an answer to every question, he was charged with "agitation and propaganda" at the Military Court in Belgrade and sentenced to eight-year imprisonment. At the end of 1949, he was transferred to the Stara Gradiška prison and on 12 March 1951 to the island of Sveti Grgur, where he was forced to labour in a quarry. As told by him, the inmates were subjected to brainwashing in addition to systematic torture, hunger, and cold. But the worst was his stay in solitary confinement. He spent 8 months and 23 days there.

 

From Sveti Grgur, he was transferred to the island of Ugljan for a short time, and from there to Bileća. He volunteered as a Gothic Germanic translator, and was later giving lessons to his interrogators. After about a year, he was sent to Belgrade, where he worked in the translation group until finally released on 1 December 1954. He spent 6 years and 3 months in post-war prisons, and the consequences were felt were long after.

 

Upon returning to Ljubljana, he quickly found a job. At first, he was a librarian and professional translator at the Faculty of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy. In 1966, he became a teacher of the English language at the Department of Germanic Languages ​​at the Faculty of Arts, where he remained until his retirement in 1980. From 1955, he also taught English and German at the "Cene Štupar" Evening University, where he introduced the audio-visual method for teaching foreign languages, which was indeed a novelty in Slovenia at that time. Specifically, he re-enrolled at the faculty after returning to Ljubljana. In 1959, he graduated from the Faculty of Arts in English and in 1961 in German. Later, he also studied abroad. He wrote and published several professional articles on modern foreign language teaching and, together with Dana Blaganje, wrote the Modern English Grammar.

 

He claimed that the period when he taught at the Faculty of Arts was the most beautiful part of his life. He achieved the goal he had set for himself in his youth. He worked with great joy and eagerness, which was also noticed by his colleagues and students, who highly appreciated him for his collegiality, modesty, politeness and complaisance. He also opted to reside in Ljubljana once again with his family (wife, daughter and son). But he simply could not erase the unjust conviction of the post-war authorities from his mind. It badly hurt him to be condemned by the authorities he had fought for and to be betrayed by acquaintances he had trusted. In 1997, he was rehabilitated by the courts, and in the following years given the status of a political prisoner and war veteran. He died in Ljubljana on 11 January 2008, precisely on his 98th birthday.

 

 

 

Sources and literature

 

Marinac, Bogdana: Med valovi in oblaki, Iz spominov mornariškega častnika, hidroletalca in profesorja Ivana Konteja, Piran: Pomorski muzej »Sergej Mašera« Piran, 2009.

 

Konte, Ivan: Avtobiografija (tipkopis), Arhiv Pomorskega muzeja »Sergej Mašera« Piran, fond Vojna mornarica Kraljevine Jugoslavije, škatla Ivan Konte.

 

Rybář, Miloš: Konte, Ivan (1910-2008), Slovenska biografija, Ljubljana: Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti, Znanstvenoraziskovalni center SAZU, 2013 http://www.slovenska-biografija.si/oseba/sbi920640/#primorski-slovenski-biografski-leksikon