Rudolf Marschall and Ivo Kerdić

Autor posvećuje pozornost životu i radu glasovitoga bečkog medaljera i kipara Rudolfa Marschalla, čiji je učenik bio i Ivo Kerdić. Dvije Marschallove plakete izrađene su za naše krajeve: ona iz 1901. u povodu otvaranja bosansko-hercegovačke željeznice prema Dubrovniku i ona iz 1905. u povodu Strossmayerove smrti.Rudolf Ferdinand Marschall (Vienna, 1873 – Vienna, 1967) was one of the most celebrated among the many medallists of the Sezession in Austria. He modelled medals with the portraits of two Austrian emperors, the German Emperor, the Czar of Bulgaria, the popes from Leon XIII to John XXIII, and many more illustrious persons of the first half of the 20th century. In 1905 he was involved into the so-called “Affaire Marschall”. Namely, when his teacher Joseph Tautenhayn retired the Emperor appointed R. Marschall as his successsor, the hell broke loose, including an unseen general strike at the Academy of Fine Arts. Since the Emperor’s decree could not be annulled, the Austrian minister of Religion and Education founded a new school for engravers and medallists in 1905 and appointed R. Marschall its director, a post he held until the Anschluss in 1938, when he was retired and the school closed. The Marschall Affair was also described by one of the eyewitnesses, Ivo Kerdić, the Croatian pupil of Marschall’s in his unpublished memoirs “Moj život i uspomene” (My life and memories). For the history of Croatian medal R. Marschall has some significance, because he was the author of several important plaquettes. One of them was struck on the occasion of the inauguration of the Bosnian-Dubrovnik narrow-track railway in 1901. It connected Bosnia with the coast of Dubrovnik, running from Sarajevo, via Mostar, Metković, Gruž in Dubrovnik, to Zelenika in the Bay of Kotor. The other plaquette was made in 1905, and originally it was planned to mark the 90th birthday of the famous Roman Catholic bishop Josip Juraj Strossmayer, whom R. Marschall had portrayed while still alive. However, the bishop died and the plaquette was issued on the occasion of his demise