{"id":11650,"date":"2025-07-15T12:43:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-15T12:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/11650\/"},"modified":"2025-07-15T12:43:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T12:43:15","slug":"joseph-mikulecs-autograph-book-revives-a-forgotten-croatian-hero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/11650\/","title":{"rendered":"Joseph Mikulec’s autograph book revives a forgotten Croatian hero"},"content":{"rendered":"

My hometown<\/p>\n

Perpetually hard up for money, toward the end of his life, Mikulec sold the autograph book to Philadelphia businessman Samuel Robinson, whose grocery store chain would later become ACME Markets. The book stayed in the family for nearly a century, until they recently sold it to Raab.<\/p>\n

Now Croatia is taking it back.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must bring it home,\u201d said Viktor \u0160imuni\u0107, the mayor of Oroslavje. On behalf of the town, he bought the book from Raab for nearly a quarter-million dollars. Last week, he came to Ardmore, Pennsylvania, to pick up his prize.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw this as an opportunity for our city, for tourism,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is not only city heritage. It\u2019s national.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u0160imuni\u0107 plans to build a museum in Oroslavje to honor a man he only learned about a couple of years ago, whom he now regards as a national hero.<\/p>\n

\"MayorMayor of Oroslavje Viktor \u0160imuni\u0107 hopes to collect at least three more signatures before returning to Croatia, those of the mayors of New York, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. (Emma Lee\/WHYY)
\nLucky town<\/p>\n

In his day, Mikulec was a rabid self-promoter. Whenever he arrived in a town, the first thing he would do was go to the local paper and try to get some press for his eccentric project. Most of the time, he got it. \u0160imuni\u0107 says he has over 800 press clippings about Mikulec and his book.<\/p>\n

Mikulec was also featured in silent film newsreels. In 1922, he showed off his book of signatures in a Path\u00e9 reel, sandwiched between a segment about the election of Pope Pius XI and shots of the U.S. secretary of state taking a Caribbean vacation.<\/p>\n

Some found Mikulec\u2019s self-promotional antics annoying. A recent article in the Smithsonian Magazine<\/a> cites a newspaper reporter in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, circa 1914, relieved that the outbreak of World War I had curtailed Mikulec\u2019s travels: \u201cAt least Mr. Mikulec will not get to Lancaster and pester us for free advertising about his remarkable but foolish performances.\u201d<\/p>\n

But to Croatians living in America, Mikulec was a hero.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Croatian newspapers wrote, every time they say, \u2018Our big Croatian guy,\u2019\u201d\u00a0 \u0160imuni\u0107 said. \u201cEvery Croatian in America knew our Joseph Mikulec.\u201d<\/p>\n

But his fame was fleeting. \u0160imuni\u0107 admits that, until Raab put the book up for sale in 2022, he had never heard of Mikulec. Since then, he has wasted no time building a national hero. Last year, his town erected a statue of Mikulec<\/a>, and now the autograph book will be the centerpiece of a planned museum.<\/p>\n

The 34-year-old mayor calls Mikulec the world\u2019s first \u201cinfluencer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis book is like Facebook of that century,\u201d \u0160imuni\u0107 said. \u201cPeople wrote messages. If people were artists, they draw. If a musician, make some notes and songs. It is very similar like today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mikulec did not fill the entire book. Its last several dozen pages are blank. \u0160imuni\u0107 is hoping to carry forward Mikulec\u2019s international vision by asking current mayors of major American cities to sign the historic book, including Cherelle Parker in Philadelphia and the mayor of New York City.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My hometown Perpetually hard up for money, toward the end of his life, Mikulec sold the autograph book…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[11572,223,88,11573],"class_list":{"0":"post-11650","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-ardmore","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-historic-preservation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}